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^* 



A CENTURY OF 
NEGRO MIGRATION 



BY 



CARTER G. WOODSON, Ph.D. (Harvard) 

Editor of the Journal of Negro History, and AuthoT of The 

Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 

THE ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF 

NEGRO LIFE AND HISTORY 

1918 



En 
.9 



^1? 



Cop>Tight, 1918 
By Carter Godwin Woodson 






pproe Qr 

THf "tW tR* PR,NT,NO COMPANY 

I.ANCA5TER, PA. 



jLI I I I J 



id 



To MY Father 
JAMES WOODSON 

WHO MADE IT POSSIBLE FOR ME 
TO ENTER THE LITERARY WORLD 



PREFACE 

IN treating this movement of the Negroes, the 
writer does not presmne to say the last word 
on the subject. The exodus of the Negroes from 
the South has just begun. The blacks have re- 
cently realized that they have freedom of body 
and they will now proceed to exercise that right. 
To presume, therefore, to exhaust the treatment 
of this movement in its incipiency is far from 
the intention of the writer. The aim here is 
rather to direct attention to this new phase of 
Negro American life which will doubtless prove 
to be the most significant event in our local his- 
tory since the Civil War. 

Many of the facts herein set forth have seen 
light before. The effort here is directed toward 
an original treatment of facts, many of which 
have already periodically appeared in some 
form. As these works, however, are too numer- 
ous to be consulted by the layman, the writer has 
endeavored to present in succinct form the lead- 
ing facts as to how the Negroes in the United 
States have struggled under adverse circunir 
stances to flee from bondage and oppression in 
quest of a land offering asylum to the oppressed 
and opportunity to the unfortunate. How they 
have often been deceived has been carefully 
noted. 



vi Preface 

With the hope that this volume may interest 
another worker to the extent of publishing many 
other facts in this field, it is respectfully sub- 
mitted to the public. 

Carter G. Woodson'. 

Wasuinoton, D. C, 
March 31, 1918. 



CONTENTS 

„ PAGE 

Chapteb 

I.— Finding a Place of Refuge 1 

11.— A Transplantation to the North. . . 18 

III.— Fighting it out on Free Soil 39 

IV.— Colonization as a Remedy for Mi- 
gration 61 

v.— The Successful Migrant 81 

yi._ Confusing Movements 101 

VII.— The Exodus to the West 126 

VIII.— The Migration of the Talented 

Tenth 147 

IX.— The Exodus during the World War. 167 

Bibliography 19^ 

Index 212 



Maps and Diagrams 

Map Showing the Per Cent of Negroes in Total 
Population, by States : 1910 159 

Diagram Showing the Negro Population of North- 
ern and Western Cities in 1900 and 1910 163 

Maps Showing Counties in Southern States in 
which Negroes Formed 50 Per Cent of the 
Total Population 165 



vu 



o 



CHAPTER I 

FINDING A PLACE OP EEFUGE 

THE migration of tlie blacks from the South- 
ern States to those offering them better 
opportunities is nothing new. The objective 
here, therefore, will be not merely to present the 
causes and results of the recent movement of 
the Negroes to the North but to connect this 
event with the periodical movements of the 
blacks to that section, from about the year 1815 
to the present day. That this movement should 
date from that period indicates that the policy 
of the commonwealths towards the Negro must 
have then begun decidedly to differ so as to 
make one section of the country more congenial 
to the despised blacks than the other. As a 
matter of fact, to justify this conclusion, we 
need but give passing mention here to develop- 
ments too well known to be discussed in detail. 
Slavery in the original thirteen States was the 
normal condition of the Negroes. When, how- 
ever, James Otis, Patrick Henry and Thomas 
Jefferson began to discuss the natural rights of 
the colonists, then said to be oppressed by Great 
Britain, some of the patriots of the Revolution 
carried their reasoning to its logical conclusion, 
contending that the Negro slaves should be 
» 1 



2 -1 C till HI- y of Negro Migration 

freed on the same grounds, as their rights were 
also founded in the laws of nature.^ And so it 
was soon done in most Northern common- 
wealths. 

\'ermont, New Hampshire, and Massachu- 
setts exterminated the institution by constitu- 
tional provision and Rhode Island, Connecticut, 
New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania by 
pradual emancipation acts.- And it was thought 
that the institution would soon thereafter pass 
away even in all southern commonwealths ex- 
cept South Carolina and Georgia, where it had 
seemingly become profitable. There came later 
the industrial revolution following the invention 
of Watt's steam engine and mechanical appli- 
ances like Whitney's cotton gin, all which 
changed the economic aspect of the modern 
world, making slavery an institution offering 
means of exploitation to those engaged in the 
production of cotton. This revolution rendered 
necessary a large supply of cheap labor for cot- 
ton culture, out of which the plantation system 
prrew. The Negro slaves, therefore, lost all hope 
of ever winning their freedom in South Caro- 
lina and (leorgia; and in Maryland, Virginia, 
and North Carolina, where the sentiment in 
favor of abolition had been favorable, there was 

*Ueke, Anti-Slavery, pp. 19, 20, 23; Worlcs of John Wool- 
•an. pp. 58, 73; and Moore, Notes on Slavery in MassacM- 
»«ff" • "1. 

. Fcdrralu,t System, chap. xii. Hart, Slavery and 
AboUttoH, pp. 153, 154. 



\ 



Finding a Place of Refuge 3 

a decided reaction which soon blighted their 
hopes.^ In the Northern commonwealths, how- 
ever, the sentiment in behalf of universal free- 
dom, though at times dormant, was ever ap- 
parent despite the attachment to the South of 
the trading classes of northern cities, which 
profited by the slave trade and their commerce 
with the slaveholding States. The Northern 
States maintaining this liberal attitude devel- 
oped, therefore, into an asylum for the Negroes 
who were oppressed in the South. 

The Negroes, however, were not generally 
welcomed in the North. Many of the north- 
erners who sympathized with the oppressed 
blacks in the South never dreamt of having them 
as their neighbors. There were, consequently, 
always two classes of anti-slavery people, those 
who advocated the abolition of slavery to ele- 
vate the blacks to the dignity of citizenship, and 
those who merely hoped to exterminate the in- 
stitution because it was an economic evil.* The 
latter generally believed that the blacks consti- 
tuted an inferior class that could not discharge 
the duties of citizenship, and when the proposal 
to incorporate the blacks into the body politic 
was clearly presented to these agitators their 
anti-slavery ardor was decidedly dampened. 
Unwilling, however, to take the position that a 

3 Turner, The Rise of the New West, pp. 45, 46, 47, 48, 49 ; 
Hammond, Cotton Industry, chaps, i and ii; Scherer, Cotton as 
a World Power, pp. 168, 175. 

* Locke, Anti-Slavery, chaps, i and ii. 



4 A Century of Negro Migration 

race should be doomed because of personal ob- 
jeK'tions, many of the early anti-slavery group 
looked toward colonization for a solution of this 
problem.^ Some thought of Africa, but since 
the deportation of a large number of persons 
who had been brought under the influence of 
modern civilization seemed cruel, the most pop- 
ular colonization scheme at first seemed to be 
that of settling the Negroes on the public lands 
in the West. As this region had been lately 
ceded, however, and no one could determine 
what use could be made of it by white men, no 
such policy was generally accepted. 

When this territory was ceded to the United 
States an effort to provide for the government 
of it finally culminated in the proposed Ordi- 
nance of 1784 carrying the provision that slav- 
ery should not exist in the Northwest Territory 
after the year 1800.^ This measure finally 
failed to pass and fortunately too, thought some, 
because, had slavery been given sixteen years 
of growth on that soil, it might not have been 
abolished there until the Civil War or it might 
have caused such a preponderance of slave 
coramonwoalths as to make the rebellion suc- 
cessful. The Ordinance of 1784 was antecedent 
to the more important Ordinance of 1787, which 
cnrriod the famous sixth article that neither 
Rlaven- nor involuntary servitude except as a 

•Jay, An Inquiry, p. 30. 

•Ford wlition, Jefferson's Writings, III, p. 432. 



Finding a Place of Refuge 5 

punishment for crime should exist in that ter- 
ritory. At first, it was generally deemed fea- 
sible to establish Negro colonies on that domain. 
Yet despite the assurance of the Ordinance of 
1787 conditions were such that one could not 
determine exactly whether the Northwest Ter- 
ritory would be slave or free."^ 

A^Tiat then was the situation in this partly un- 
occupied territory? Slavery existed in what is 
now the Northwest Territory from the time of 
the early exploration and settlement of that re- 
gion by the- French. The first slaves of white 
men were Indians. Though it is true that the 
red men usually chose death rather than slavery, 
there were some of them that bowed to the yoke. 
So many Pawnee Indians became bondsmen 
that the word Pani became synonymous with 
slave in the West.^ Western Indians them- 
selves, following the custom of white men, en- 
slaved their captives in war rather than choose 
the alternative of putting them to death. In 
this way they were known to hold a number of 
blacks and whites. 

7 For the passage of this ordinance three reasons have been 
given: Slavery then prior to the invention of the cotton gin 
was considered a necessary evil in the South. The expected 
monopoly of the tobacco and indigo cultivation in the South 
would be promoted by excluding Negroes from the Northwest 
Territory and thus preventing its cultivation there. Dr. Cut- 
ler's influence aided by Mr. Grayson of Virginia was of much 
assistance. The philanthropic idea was not so prominent as 
men have thought. — Dunn, Indiana, p. 212. 

8 lUd., p. 254. 



6 A Century of Negro Migration 

Tho enslavement of the black man by the 
whites in this section dates from the early part 
of the eighteenth century. Being a part of the 
IxJiiisiana Territory which under France ex- 
tended over the whole Mississippi Valley as far 
as the Allegheny mountains, it was governed 
])y the same colonial regulations.^ Slavery, 
therefore, had legal standing in this territory. 
When Antoine Crozat, upon being placed in con- 
trol of Louisiana, was authorized to begin a 
traffic in slaves, Crozat himself did nothing to 
carry out his plan. But in 1717 when the control 
of the colony was transferred to the Compagnie 
de r Occident steps were taken toward the im- 
portation of slaves. In 1719, when 500 Guinea 
Xegroes were brought over to serve in Lower 
iTOuisiana, Philip Francis Renault imported 500 
other bondsmen into Upper Louisiana or what 
was later included in the Northwest Territory. 
Slavery then became more and more extensive 
until by 1750 there were along the Mississippi 
five settlements of slaves, Kaskaskia, Kaokia, 
Fort Chartres, St. Phillipe and Prairie du 
Rocher.'^^ In 1763 Negroes were relatively 

» Code Noir. 

«» Speaking of these settlements in 1750, M. Viner, a Jesuit 
MiMionary to the Indians, said: "We have here Whites, Ne- 
(TToon, and Indians, to say nothing of cross-breeds— There are 
five French villages and three villages of the natives within a 
irr.nro of twenty-one leagues-In the five French villages there 
>ro perhaps eleven hundred whites, three hundred blacks, and 
•omo Buty red slaves or savages." 



Finding a Place of Refuge 7 

numerous in the Northwest Territory but when 
this section that year was transferred to the 
British the number was diminished by the action 
of those Frenchmen who, unwilling to become 
subjects of Great Britain, moved from the ter- 
ritory.^^ There was no material increase in the 
slave population thereafter until the end of the 

Unlike the condition of the slaves in Lower Louisiana where 
the rigid enforcement of the Slave Code made their lives almost 
intolerable, the slaves of the Northwest Territory were for 
many reasons much more fortunate. In the first place, subject 
to the control of a mayor-commandant appointed by the Gover- 
nor of New Orleans, the early dwellers in this territory managed 
their plantations about as they pleased. Moreover, as there 
were few planters who owned as many as three or four Negroes, 
slavery in the Northwest Territory did not get far beyond the 
patriarchal stage. Slaves were usually well fed. The relations 
between master and slave were friendly. The bondsmen were 
allowed special privileges on Sundays and holidays and their 
children were taught the catechism according to the ordinance 
of Louis XIV in 1724, which provided that all masters should 
educate their slaves in the Apostolic Catholic religion and have 
them baptized. Male slaves were worked side by side in the 
fields with their masters and the female slaves in neat attire 
went with their mistresses to matins and vespers. Slaves 
freely mingled in practically all festive enjoyments. — See 
Jesuit Belations, LXIX, p. 144; Hutchins, An Historical Nar- 
rative, 1784; and Code Noir. 

11 Mention was thereafter made of slaves as in the case of 
Captain Philip Pittman who in 1770 wrote of one Mr. Beauvais, 
"who owned 240 orpens of cultivated land and eighty slaves; 
and such a case as that of a Captain of a militia at St. Philips, 
possessing twenty blacks; and the case of Mr. Bales, a very rich 
man of St. Genevieve, Illinois, owning a hundred Negroes, 
beside having white people constantly employed." — See Cap- 
tain Pittman 's The Present State of the European Settlements 
in the Mississippi, 1770. 

2 



8 



A Century of Negro Migration 



i-iKhti'i'iitli century when some Negroes came 
from the original tliirteen. 

Tlie Ordinance of 1787 did not disturb tlie re- 
lation of slave and master. Some pioneers 
thought that the sixth article exterminated slav- 
ery there ; others contended that it did not. The 
latter believed that such expressions in the Or- 
dinance of 1787 as the ''free inhabitants" and 
the "free male inhabitants of full size" implied 
the continuance of slavery and others found 
ground for its perpetuation in that clause of the 
Ordinance which allowed the people of the ter- 
ritof}' to adopt the constitution and laws of any 
one of the thirteen States. Students of law 
saw jjrotection for slavery in Jay's treaty which 
guaranteed to the settlers their property of all 
kinds. '2 AMien, therefore, the slave question 
came up in the Northwest Territory about the 
close of the eighteenth century, there were three 
classes of slaves: first, those who were in servi- 
tude to French owners previous to the cession 
of the Territory to England and were still 
claimed as property in the possession of which 
the owners were protected under the treaty of 
1763; second, those who were held by British 
owners at the time of Jay's treaty and claimed 
afterward as property under its protection; and 
third, those who, since the Territory had been 
(•f>ntroljod by the United States, had been 
brought from the commonwealths in which slav- 

>» Dunn, Indiana, chap. vi. 



Finding a Place of Befuge 9 

ery was allowed.^^ Freedom, however, was 
recognized as the ultimate status of the Negro 
in that territory. 

This question having been seemingly settled, 
Anthony Benezet, who for years advocated the 
abolition of slavery and devoted his time and 
means to the preparation of the Negroes for 
living as freedmen, was practical enough to 
recommend to the Congress of the Confedera- 
tion a plan of colonizing the emancipated blacks 
on the western lands. ^^ Jefferson incorporated 
into his scheme for a modern system of public 
schools the training of the slaves in industrial 
and agricultural branches to equip them for a 
higher station in life. He believed, however, 
that the blacks not being equal to the white race 
should not be assimilated and should they be 
free, they should, by all means, be colonized 
afar off.^^ Thinking that the western lands 
might be so used, he said in writing to James 
Monroe in 1801: ''A very great extent of coun- 
try north of the Ohio has been laid off in town- 
ships, and is now at market, according to the 
provisions of the act of Congress. . . . There 
is nothing," said he, ''which would restrain the 
State of Virginia either in the purchase or the 

13 Hinsdale, Old Northwest, p. 350. 

^i Tyrannical Libertymen, pp. 10, 11; Loeke, Anti-Slavery, 
pp. 31, 32; Brannagan, Serious Remonstrance, p. 18. 

15 Washington edition of Jefferson's Writings, chap, vi, p. 
456, and chap, viii, p. 380. 



10 .1 Century of Negro Migration 

npplioation of these lands. "^^ Yet he raised the 
<luostion as to whether the establishment of such 
a colony within our limits and to become a part 
of the Union would be desirable. He thought 
then of procurinc: a place beyond the limits of 
the United States on our northern boundary, 
by purchasinc: the Indian lands with the consent 
of Piroat Britain. He then doubted that the black 
race would live in such a rigorous climate. 

This plan did not easily pass from the minds 
of the friends of the slaves, for in 1805 Thomas 
Brannagan asserted in his Serious Remon- 
strances that the government should appro- 
priate a few thousand acres of land at some dis- 
tant part of the national domains for the Ne- 
groes' accommodation and support. He be- 
lieved that the new State might be established 
upwards of 2,000 miles from our frontier.^'^ A 
ropy of the pamphlet containing this proposi- 
tion was sent to Thomas Jefferson, who was im- 
pre.ssed thereby, but not having the courage to 
brave the torture of being branded as a friend 
of the slave, he failed to give it his support.^^ 
The same question was brought prominently be- 
fore the public again in 1816 when there was 
presented to the House of Eepresentatives a 
memorial from the Kentuclcy Abolition Society 
prayincr tliat the free people of color be colonized 

'•Ford edition of Jefferson's Writings, III, pp. 244- IX p 
S03: X, pp. 76. 290. ' ' Fi , , f- 

'' '" Scriou.i Txemonsirnnees, p. 18. 

. -lion of Jefferson's Writings, X, pp. 295, 296. 



/ 



Finding a Place of Refuge 11 

on tlie public lands. The committee to whom 
the memorial was referred for consideration 
reported that it was expedient to refuse the re- 
quest on the ground that, as such lands were not 
granted to free white men, they saw no reason 
for granting them to others. ^^ 

Some Negro slaves unwilling to wait to be 
carried or invited to the Northwest Territory 
escaped to that section even when it was con- 
trolled by the French prior to the American 
Eevolution. Slaves who reached the West by 
this route caused trouble between the French 
and the British colonists. Advertising in 1746 
for James Wenyam, a slave, Richard Colgate, 
his master, said that he swore to a Negro whom 
he endeavored to induce to go with him, that he 
had often been in the backwoods with his mas- 
ter and that he would go to the French and In- 
dians and fight for them.^^ In an advertise- 
ment for a mulatto slave in 1755 Thomas Rin- 
gold, his master, expressed fear that he had es- 
caped by the same route to the French. He, 
therefore, said: "It seems to be the interest, at 
least, of every gentleman that has slaves, to be 
active in the beginning of these attempts, for 
whilst we have the French such near neighbors, 
we shall not have the least security in that kind 
of property. "2^ 

19 Adams, Neglected Period of Anti- Slavery, pp. 129, 130. 

20 The Pennsylvania Gazette, July 31, 1746. 

21 The Maryland Gazette, March 20, 1755. 



12 A Century of Negro Migration 

The good treatment which these slaves re- 
c-eivej among the French, and especially at 
Pittsburgh the gateway to the Northwest Ter- 
ritory, tended to make that city an asylum for 
those slaves who had sufficient spirit of ad- 
venture to brave the wilderness through which 
tliey had to go. Negroes even then had the idea 
tliat there was in this country a place of more 
l>rivilege than those they enjoyed in the sea- 
board colonies. Knowing of the likelihood of 
the Negroes to rise during the French and In- 
dian "War, Governor Diuwiddie wrote Fox one 
of the Secretaries of State in 1756: ''We dare 
not venture to part with any of our white men 
any distance, as we must have a watchful eye 
over our Negro slaves, who are upward of one 
hundred thousand. "^^ Brissot de Warville 
mentions in his Travels of 1788 several ex- 
amples of marriages of white and blacks in 
Pittsburgh. He noted the case of a Negro who 
married an indentured French servant woman. 
Out of this union came a desirable mulatto girl 
who married a surgeon of Nantes then stationed 
at Pittsburgh. His family was considered one 
of the most respectable of the city. The Negro 
referred to was doing a creditable business and 
liis wife took it upon herself to welcome for- 
eigners, especially the French, who came that 
way. Along the Ohio also there were several 
cases of women of color living with unmarried 

**Wa»hington's Writingg, IT, p. 134. 



Finding a Place of Refuge 13 

white men; but this was looked upon by the Ne- 
groes as detestable as was evidenced by the fact 
that, if black women had a quarrel with a mu- 
latto woman, the former would reproach the 
latter for being of ignoble blood.^^ 

These tendencies, however, could not assure 
the Negro that the Northwest Territory was to 
be an asylum for freedom when in 1763 it passed 
into the hands of the British, the promoters of 
the slave trade, and later to the independent col- 
onies, two of which had no desire to exterminate 
slavery. Furthermore, when the Ordinance of 
1787 with its famous sixth article against slav- 
ery was proclaimed, it was soon discovered that 
this document was not necessarily emancipa- 
tory. Ag the right to hold slaves was guaran- 
teed to those who owned them prior to the 
passage of the Ordinance of 1787, it was to be 
expected that those attached to that institution 
would not indifferently see it pass away. Va- 
rious petitions, therefore, were sent to the ter- 
ritorial legislature and to Congress praying that 
the sixth article of the Ordinance of 1787 be ab- 
rogated.^'* No formal action to this effect was 
taken, but the practice of slavery was continued 
even at the winking of the government. Some 
slaves came from the Canadians who, in accord- 
ance with the slave trade laws of the British 

23 Brissot de Warville, New Travels, II, pp. 33-34. 

24 Harris, Slavery in Illinois, chaps, iii, iv, and v; Dunn, In 
diana, pp. 218-260; Hinsdale, Old Northwest, pp. 351-358. 



14 



A Ceniunj of Negro Migration 



Empire, were .supplied with bondsmen. It was 
the Canadians themselves who provided by act 
of parliament in 1793 for prohibiting the impor- 
tation of slaves and for gradual emancipation. 
When it seemed later that the cause of freedom 
would eventually triumph the proslavery ele- 
ment undertook to perpetuate slavery through 
a system of indentured servant labor. 

In the formation of the States of Indiana and 
Illinois the question as to what should be done 
to harmonize with the new constitution the sys- 
tem of indenture to which the territorial legis- 
latures had been committed, caused heated de- 
bate and at times almost conflict. Both In- 
diana^ and Illinois-'^ finally incorporated into 

«» This code provided that all male Negroes under fifteen 
years of age either owned or acquired must remain in servitude 
until they reached the age of thirty-five and female slaves until 
thirty-two. The male children of such persons held to service 
could be bound out for thirty years and the female children for 
twenty-eight. Slaves brought into the territory had to comply 
with contracts for terms of service when their master registered 
them within thirty days from the time he brought them into the 
territory. Indentured black servants were not exactly sold, 
but the law permitted the transfer from one owner to another 
when the slave acquiesced in the transfer before a notary, but 
it wa« often done without regard to the slave. They were even 
bequeathed and sold as personal property at auction. Notices 
for sale were frequent. There were rewards for runaway 
sUvefi. Negroes whose terms had almost expired were kid- 
n»j>i»e<l and sold to New Orleans. The legislature imposed a 
penalty for such, but it was not generally enforced. They 
worp taxable property valued according to the length of service. 
Ne|;ro«! i-ervcd as Inliorcrs on farms, house servants, and in 
•aJt miocs, the latter being an excuse for holding them aa 



Finding a Place of Refuge 15 

their constitutions compromise provisions for 
a nominal prohibition of slavery modified by 
clauses for the continuation of the system of in- 
dentured labor of the Negroes held to service. 
The proslavery party persistently struggled 
for some years to secure by the interpretation 
of the laws, by legislation and even by amend- 
ing the constitution so to change the funda- 
mental law as to provide for actual slavery. 
These States,however, gradually worked toward 
freedom in keeping with the spirit of the ma- 
jority who framed the constitution, despite the 

slaves. Persons of color could purchase servants of their own 
race. The law provided that the Justice of the County could 
on complaint from the master order that a lazy servant be 
whipped. In this frontier section, therefore, where men often 
took the law in their own hands, slaves were often punished 
and abused just as they were in the Southern States. The law 
dealing with fugitives was somewhat harsh. When appre- 
hended, fugitives had to serve two days extra for each day 
they lost from their master's service. The harboring of a run- 
away slave was punishable by a fine of one day for each the 
slave might be concealed. Consistently too with the provision 
of the laws in most slave States, slaves could retain all goods 
or money lawfully acquired during their servitude provided 
their master gave his consent. Upon the demonstration of 
proof to the county court that they had served their term they 
could obtain from that tribunal certificates of freedom. See 
The Laws of Indiana. 

26 Masters had to provide adequate f ood^ and clothing and 
good lodging for the slave, but the penalty for failing to comply 
with this law was not clear and even if so, it happened that 
many masters never observed it. There was also an effort to 
prevent cruelty to slaves, but it was difficult to establish the 
guilt of masters when the slave could not bear witness against 
his owner and it was not likely that the neighbor equally guUty 



ir> .1 Ccntnnj of Negro Migration 

fact that the indenture system in southern Illi- 
nois and especially iu Indiana was at times tan- 
t^unount to slavery as it was practiced in parts 
of the South. 

It nmst be borne in mind here, however, that 
the North at this time was far from becoming a 
phice of refuge for Negroes. In the first place, 
tlie industrial revolution had not then had time 
to reduce the Negroes to the plane of beasts in 
the cotton kingdom. The rigorous climate and 
the industries of the northern people, more- 
over, were not inviting to the blacks and the de- 
veloj^nient of the carrying trade and the rise of 
manufacturing there did not make that section 

or indifferent to the complaicts of the blacks would take their 
petitions to court. 

Under this system a large number of slaves were brought into 
the Territory especially after 1807. There were 135 in 1800. 
Thia increase came from Kentucky and Tennessee. As those 
brought were largely boys and girls with a long period of 
nenicc, this form of slavery was assured for some years. The 
children of these blacks were often registered for thirty-five 
in^tead of thirty years of service on the ground that they were 
not born in Illinois. No one thought of persecuting a master 
for holding servants unlawfully and Negroes themselves could 
»>«• i-a-Hily dcccive<l. Very few settlers brought their slaves there 
io tne them. There were only 749 in 1820. If one considers 
the proportion of this to the number brought there for manu- 
miamon this seems hardly true. It is better to say that during 
lh*« firwt two decades of the nineteenth century some settlers 
came for both purposes, some to hold slaves, some, as Edward 
Coif, to free them. It was not only practiced in the southern 
part along the Mississippi and Ohio but as far north in Illinois 
MM .H«ng»mon County, were found servants known as "yellow 
boji" and "colored girls."— See the Laws of Illinois. 



Finding a Place of Refuge 17 

more attractive to unskilled labor. Further- 
more, when we consider the fact that there were 
many thousands of Negroes in the Southern 
States the presence of a few in the North must 
be regarded as insignificant. This paucity of 
blacks then obtained especially in the North- 
west Territory, for its French inhabitants in- 
stead of being an exploiting people were pioneer- 
ing, having little use for slaves in carrying out 
their policy of merely holding the country for 
France. Moreover, like certain gentlemen from 
Virginia, who after the American Revolution 
were afraid to bring their slaves with them to 
occupy their bounty lands in Ohio, few enter- 
prising settlers from the slave States had in- 
vaded the territory with their Negroes, not 
knowing whether or not they would be secure 
in the possession of such property. When we 
consider that in 1810 there were only 102,137 
Negroes in the North and no more than 3,454 in 
the Northwest Territory, we must look to the 
second decade of the nineteenth century for the 
beginning of the migration of the Negroes in 
the United States. 



CHAPTER n 

A TRANSPLA2JTAT10N TO THE NORTH 

TT'ST after the settlement of the question of 
*i holdiiijr tlie western posts by the British 
and the adjustment of the trouble arising from 
tlieir capture of slaves during our second war 
witli England, there started a movement of the 
l)hu'ks to this frontier territory. But, as there 
were few towns or cities in the Northwest dur- 
ing tlie first decades of the new republic, the 
fliglit of the Negro into that territory was like 
that of a fugitive taking his chances in the wil- 
derness. Having lost their pioneering spirit in 
jmssing through the ordeal of slavery, not many 
of the bondmen took flight in that direction 
and few free Negroes ventured to seek their 
fortunes in those wilds during the period of the 
frontier conditions, especially when the country 
had not tlien undergone a thorough reaction 
against the Negro. 

The migration of the Negroes, however, re- 
ceived an impetus early in the nineteenth cen- 
tury. Tliis came from the Quakers, who by the 
middle of the eighteenth century had taken the 
position that all members of their sect should 
free their slaves.^ The Quakers of North Caro- 

» Moore, Anti-Slavery, p. 70; and Special Beport of the 
^'~ ' ' '" ' ''mmittsionrr of Education,lS7l, p. 376; Weeks, 
V '.r.i, pp. 215, 216, 231, 232, 242. 

18 



Transplantation to the North 19 

lina and Virginia had as early as 1740 taken up 
the serious question of humanely treating their 
Negroes. The North Carolina Quakers advised 
Friends to emancipate their slaves, later pro- 
hibited traffic in them, forbade their members 
from even hiring the blacks out in 1780 and by 
1818 had exterminated the institution among 
their communicants. ^ After healing themselves 
of the sin, they had before the close of the eight- 
eenth century militantly addressed themselves 
to the task of abolishing slavery and the slave 
trade throughout the world. Differing in their 
scheme from that of most anti- slavery leaders, 
they were advocating the establishment of the 
freedmen in society as good citizens and to that 
end had provided for the religious and mental 
instruction of their slaves prior to emancipating 
them.^ 

Despite the fact that the Quakers were not 
free to extend their operations throughout the 
colonies, they did much to enable the Negroes 
to reach free soil. As the Quakers believed in 
the freedom of the will, human brotherhood, and 
equality before God, they did not, like the Puri- 
tans, find difficulties in solving the problem of 
elevating the Negroes. ^Hiereas certain Puri- 
tans were afraid that conversion might lead to 
the destruction of caste and the incorporation 

2 The Southern WorTcman, xxvii, p. 161. 

3 Rhodes, History of the United States, chap, i, p. 6 ; Ban- 
croft, History of the United States, chap, ii, p. 401 ; and Locke, 
Anti-Slavery, p. 32. 



20 .1 Cent urn of Negro Migration 

of uiuk'sirable persons into the ''Body Poli- 
tick," the Quakers proceeded on the principle 
tliat all men are brethren and, being equal be- 
fore (lod, sliould be considered equal before the 
law. On account of unduly emphasizing the re- 
lation of man to God, the Puritans ''atrophied 
their social humanitarian instinct" and devel- 
oped into a race of self-conscious saints. Be 
lieving in human nature and laying stress upon 
the relation between man and man, the Quakers 
became the friends of all humanity.* 

In 1603 George Keith, a leading Quaker of 
his day, came forward as a promoter of the re- 
ligious training of the slaves as a preparation 
for emancipation. William Penn advocated the 
emanciiiation of slaves, that they might have 
every opportunity for improvement. In 1695 
the Quakers while protesting against the slave 
trade denounced also the policy of neglecting 
their moral and spiritual welfare.^ The grow- 
ing interest of this sect in the Negroes was 
shown later by the development in 1713 of a 
definite scheme for freeing and returning them 
to Africa after having been educated and trained 
to serve as missionaries on that continent. 

When the manumission of the slaves was 
checked ]»y the reaction against that class and it 

* A Brief Statement of the Fisc and Progress of the Testi- 
mony of the Qualcrs, passim; Wootlson, The Education of the 
Netiro Prior to 1861, p. 43. 

6 Woodson, The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861, p. 44; 
aod Locko, Anti Slavery, p. 32. 



Transplantation to the North 21 

became more of a problem to establish them in 
a hostile environment, certain Quakers of North 
Carolina and Virginia adopted the scheme of 
settling them in Northern States.® At first, 
they sent such freedmen to Pennsylvania. But 
for various reasons this did not prove to be 
the best asylum. In the first place, Penn- 
sylvania bordered on the slave States, Mary- 
land and Virginia, from which agents came 
to kidnap free Negroes. Furthermore, too 
many Negroes were already rushing to that 
commonwealth as the Negroes' heaven and 
there was the chance that the Negroes might be 
settled elsewhere in the North, where they 
might have better economic opportunities.'^ A 
committee of forty was accordingly appointed 
by North Carolina Quakers in 1822 to examine 
the laws of other free States with a view to de- 
termining what section would be most suitable 
for colonizing these blacks. This committee 
recommended in its report that the blacks be 
colonized in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. 

The yearly meeting, therefore, ordered the 
removal of such Negroes as fast as they were 
willing or as might be consistent with the pro- 
fession of their sect, and instructed the agents 
effecting the removal to draw on the treasury 
for any sum not exceeding two hundred dollars 
to defray expenses. An increasing number 

6 The Southern Worfcman, xxxvii, pp. 158-169. 

7 Ttiraer, The Negro in Pennsylvania, pp. 144, 145, 151, 155. 



22 A Century of Negro Migration 

reached these States every year but, owing to 
tlie inducements offered by the American Col- 
onization Society, some of them went to Liberia. 
Wlien Liberia, however, developed into every 
thins? but a haven of rest, the number sent to the 
settlements in the Northwest greatly increased. 

The quarterly meeting succeeded in sending to 
the AVest 133 Negroes, including 23 free blacks 
and slaves given up because they were con- 
nected by marriage with those to be trans- 
planted.^ The Negro colonists seemed to pre- 
fer Indiana.^ They went in three companies 
and with suitable young Friends to whom were 
executed powers of attorney to manumit, set 
free, settle and bind them out^"^ Thirteen carts 
and wagons were bought for these three com- 
panies; $1,250 was furnished for their traveling 
expenses and clothing, the whole cost amounting 
to $2,490. It was planned to send forty or fifty 
to Long Island and twenty to the interior of 
Pennsylvania, but they failed to prosper and re- 
ports concerning them stamped them as desti- 
tute and deplorably ignorant. Those who went 
to Ohio and Indiana, however, did well.^^ 

Later we receive another interesting account 
of this exodus. David AAHiite led a company of 
fifty-throo into the West, thirty-eight of whom 

• Southern Workman, xirvii, p. 157. 

• I/cvi CoflTin, Jieminiscenccs, chaps, i and ii. 
10 Southtrn ll'orktjian, xxxvii, pp. 161-163. 

»»Coffln, Reminiscences, p. 109; and Howe's Historical Col- 
lectionM, p. 356. 



Transplantation to the North 23 

belonged to Friends, five to a member who had 
ordered that they be taken West at his expense. 
Six of these slaves belonged to Samuel Law- 
rence, a Negro slaveholder, who had purchased 
himself and family. White pathetically reports 
the case of four of the women who had married 
slave husbands and had twenty children for the 
possession of whom the Friends had to stand a 
lawsuit in the courts. The women had decided 
to leave their husbands behind but the thought 
of separation so tormented them that they made 
an effort to secure their liberty. Upon appeal- 
ing to their masters for terms the owners, some- 
what moved by compassion, sold them for one 
half of their value. White then went West and 
left four in Chillicothe, twenty-three in Lees- 
burg and twenty-six in Wayne County, Indiana, 
without encountering any material difficulty.^^ 

Others had thought of this plan but the 
Quakers actually carried it out on a small scale. 
Here we see again not only their desire to have 
the Negroes emancipated but the vital interest 
of the Quakers in success of the blacks, for 
members of this sect not only liberated their 
slaves but sold out their own holdings in the 
South and moved with these freedmen into the 
North. Quakers who then lived in free States 
offered fugitives material assistance by open 
and clandestine methods.^^ The most prom- 

12 Southern WorTcman, xxxvii, pp. 162, 163. 
laLevi Coffin, Reminiscences, pp. 108-111. 



21 .1 Ccntunj of Negro Migration 

inent leader developed by the movement was 
I^vi Coffin, whose daring deeds in behalf of 
the fii£?itives made him the reputed President 
of the Underground Railroad. Most of the 
Quaker settlements of Negroes with which he 
was coimeeted were made in what is now Ham- 
ilton, Howard, Wayne, Randolph, Vigo, Gib- 
son, Grant, Rush, and Tipton Counties, Indiana, 
and Darke County, Ohio. 

The promotion of this movement by the 
Quakers was well on its way by 1815 and was 
not materially checked until the fifties when the 
operations of the drastic fugitive slave law in- 
terfered, and even then the movement had 
gained such momentum and the execution of 
that mischievous measure had produced in the 
North so much reaction like that expressed in 
the personal liberty laws, that it could not be 
stopped. The Negroes found homes in Western 
Now York, Western Pennsylvania and through- 
out the Northwest Territory. The Negro popu- 
lation of York, Harrisburg and Philadelphia 
ra|)idly increased. A settlement of Negroes de- 
veloped at Sandy Lake in Northwestern Penn- 
sylvania'^ and there was another near Berlin 
Cross Roads in Ohio.^^ A group of Negroes 
migrating to this same State found homes in 
the Van Buren Township of Shelby County.^^ A 

>« 8i«-l>ort, The Underground HaUroad, p. 249. 
>» IjinRnton, From the Virginia Plantation to the National 
CapUol, p. 55. 

'• Howe, Historical Collections, p. 465. 



Transplantation to the North 25 

more significant settlement in the State was 
made by Samuel Gist, an Englishman possess- 
ing extensive plantations in Hanover, Amherst, 
and Henrico Counties, Virginia. He provided 
in his will that his slaves should be freed and 
sent to the North. He further provided that the 
revenue from his plantation the last year of his 
life be applied in building schoolhouses and 
churches for their accommodation, and ''that 
all money coming to him in Virginia be set 
aside for the employment of ministers and 
teachers to instruct them. ' ' In 1818, Wickham, 
the executor of his estate, purchased land and 
established these Negroes in what was called 
the Upper and Lower Camps of Brown 
County.^'^ 

Augustus Wattles, a Quaker from Connecti- 
cut, made a settlement in Mercer County, Ohio, 
early in the nineteenth century. In the winter 
of 1833-4, he providentially became acquainted 
with the colored people of Cincinnati, finding 
there about ' '4,000 totally ignorant of every thing 
calculated to make good citizens." As most of 
them had been slaves, excluded from every ave- 
nue of moral and mental improvement, he es- 
tablished for them a school which he maintained 
for two years. He then proposed to these Ne- 
groes to go into the country and purchase land to 
remove them "from those contaminating influ- 
ences which had so long crushed them in our 

17 History of Brown County, Ohio, pw 313. 



26 A Century of Negro Migration 

cities and villages. "^^ Ti^gy consented on the 
condition that be would accompany tliem and 
teach school. He travelled through Canada, 
Michigan and Indiana, looking for a suitable 
location, and finally selected for settlement a 
place in Mercer County, Ohio. In 1835, he made 
the first purchase of land there for this purpose 
and before 1838 Negroes had bought there about 
30,000 acres, at the earnest appeal of this bene- 
factor, who had travelled into almost every 
neighborhood of the blacks in the State, and laid 
before them the benefits of a permanent home for 
themselves and of education for their children.^^ 
This settlement was further increased in 1858 
by the manumitted slaves of John Harper of 
North Carolina.^" John Randolph of Eoanoke 
endeavored to establish his slaves as freemen 
in this county but the Germans who had settled 
in that community a little ahead of them started 

1* Wattles said: he purchased for himself 190 acres of land, 
to establish a manual labor school for colored boys. He had 
maintained a Bchool on it, at his own expense, till the eleventh 
of November, 1842. While in Philadelphia the winter before, 
he became acquainted with the trustees of the late Samuel 
Emlen, a Friend of New Jersey. He left by his will $20,000 
for the "support and education in school learning and the 
mechanic arts and agriculture, boys, of African and Indian 
deBccnt, whose parents would give them up to the school. They 
united their means and purchased Wattles farm, and appointed 
him the Buperintendent of the establishment, which they called 
the Emlen Institute. "—See Howe's Historical Collections, p. 
356. 

i'Howc'b TJistorical Collections, p. 355. 

" Manuscripis in the possession of J. E. Moorland. 



Transplantation to the North 27 

such a disturbance that Eandolph's executor 
could not carry out his plan, although he had pur- 
chased a large tract of land there.^- It was nec- 
essary to send these freemen to Miami County. 
Theodoric H. Gregg of Dinwiddle County, Vir- 
ginia, liberated his slaves in 1854 and sent them 
to Ohio.22 Nearer to the Civil War, when public 
opinion was proscribing the uplift of Negroes 
in Kentucky, Noah Spears secured near Xenia, 
Greene County, Ohio, a small parcel of land for 
sixteen of his former bondsmen in 1856.^^ 
Other freedmen found their way to this com- 
munity in later years and it became so pros- 
perous that it was selected as the site of Wilber- 
force University. 

This transplantation extended into Michigan. 
With the help of persons philanthropically in- 
clined there sprang up a flourishing group of 
Negroes in Detroit. Early in the nineteenth 
century they began to acquire property and to 
provide for the education of their children. 
Their record was such as to merit the enco- 
miums of their fellow white citizens. In later 
years this group in Detroit was increased by the 
operation of laws hostile to free Negroes in the 
South in that life for this class not only became 
intolerable but necessitated their expatriation. 
Because of the Virginia drastic laws and espe- 

21 The African Repository, xxii, pp. 322, 333. 

22 Simmons, Men of Marie, p. 723. 

2^ Southern Worlcman, xxxvii, p. 15&. 



28 A Century of Negro Migration 

eially that of 1838 prohibiting the return to that 
State of such Negro students as had been ac- 
customed to go North to attend school, after 
they were denied this pri\alege at home, the 
father of Richard DeBaptiste and Marie Louis 
More, tlie mother of Fannie M. Richards, led a 
colony of free Negroes from Fredericksburg to 
Detroit.-^ And for about similar reasons the 
father of Robert A. Pelham conducted others 
from Petersburg, Virginia, in 1859.^^ ^ One 
Saunders, a planter of Cabell County, West Vir- 
ginia, liberated his slaves some years later and 
furnished them homes among the Negroes set- 
tled in Cass County, Michigan, about ninety 
miles east of Chicago, and ninety-five miles 
west of Detroit. 

This settlement had become attractive to 
fugitive slaves and freedmen because the Quak- 
ers settled there welcomed them on their way to 
freedom and in some cases encouraged them to 
remain among them. When the increase of 
fugitives was rendered impossible during the 
fifties when the Fugitive Slave Law was being 
enforced, there was still a steady gi'owth due 
to the manumission of slaves by sympathetic 
and benevolent masters in the South.^^ Most 
of tiiese Negroes settled in Calvin Township, 
in tliat county, so that of the 1,376 residing there 

»• The Journal of Negro History, I, pp. 23-33. 

" I hid., I, p. 2(). 

»• The African depository, passim. 



Transplantation to the North 29 

in 1860, 795 were established in this district, 
there being only 580 whites dispersed among 
them. The Negro settlers did not then obtain 
control of the government but they early pur- 
chased land to the extent of several thousand 
acres and developed into successful small farm- 
ers. Being a little more prosperous than the 
average Negro community in the North, the 
Cass County settlement not only attracted Ne- 
groes fleeing from hardships in the South but 
also those who had for some years unsuccess- 
fully endeavored to establish themselves in 
other communities on free soil.^"^ 

These settlements were duplicated a little 
farther west in Illinois. Edward Coles, a Vir- 
ginian, who in 1818 emigrated to Illinois, of 
which he later served as Governor and as lib- 
erator from slavery, settled his slaves in that 

27 Although constituting a majority of the population even 
before the Civil War the Negroes of this township did not get 
recognition in the local government until 1875 when John 
Allen, a Negro, was elected township treasurer. From that 
time until about 1890 the Negroes always shared the honors of 
office with their white citizens and since that time they have 
usually had entire control of the local government in that 
township, holding such offices as supervisor, clerk, treasurer, 
road commissioner, and school director. Their record has been 
that of efficiency. Boss rule among them is not known. The 
best man for an office is generally sought; for this is a com- 
munity of independent farmers. In 1907 one hundred and 
eleven different farmers in this community had holdings of 
10,439 acres. Their township usually has very few delinquent 
taxpayers and it promptly makes its returns to the county. — 
See the Southern WorTcman, xxxvii, pp. 486-489. 



30 A Ccntunj of Negro Migration 

commonwealth. He brought them to Edwards- 
ville, where they constituted a community 
known as "Coles' Negroes."-^ There was an- 
other community of Negroes in Illinois in what 
is now called BrookljTi situated north of East 
St. Louis. This town was a center of some 
consequence in the thirties. It became a station 
of the Underground Kailroad on the route to 
Alton and to Canada. As all of the Negroes 
who emerged from the South did not go farther 
into the North, the black population of the town 
gradually grew despite the fact that slave 
liunters captured and reenslaved many of the 
Negroes who settled there.-'' 

These settlements together with favorable 
communities of sympathetic whites promoted 
the migration of the free Negroes and fugitives 
from the South by serving as centers offering 
assistance to those fleeing to the free States and 
to Canada. The fugitives usually found friends 
in rhiladelphia, Columbia, Pittsburgh, Elmira, 
I\*ochester, Buffalo, Gallipolis, Portsmouth, 
Akron, Cincinnati, and Detroit. They passed 
on the way to freedom through Columbia, Phila- 
delphia, Klizabethtown and by way of sea to 

2» Davidson and Stowe, xi Complete History of Illinois, pp. 
321, 322; nud Washburn, Edward Coles, pp. 44 and 53. 

••The Negro population of this town so rapidly increased 
after tho war that it has become a Negro town and unfor- 
tunntoly a bad one. Much improvement has been made in 
rccfht years. — Sco Southern Workman, xxx\-ii, pp. 489-494. 



Transplantation to the North 31 

New York and Boston, from which they pro- 
ceeded to permanent settlements in the North.^*^ 

In the West, the migration of the blacks was 
further facilitated by the peculiar geographic 
condition in that the Appalachian highland, ex- 
tending like a peninsula into the South, had a 
natural endowment which produced a class of 
white citizens hostile to the institution of slav- 
ery. These mountaineers coming later to the 
colonies had to go to the hills and mountains be- 
cause the first comers from Europe had taken 
up the land near the sea. Being of the German 
and Scotch-Irish Presbyterian stock, they had 
ideals differing widely from, those of the sea- 
board slaveholders.^^ The mountaineers be- 
lieved in ''civil liberty in fee simple, and an 
open road to civil honors, secured to the poorest 
and feeblest members of society." The eastern 
element had for their ideal a government of in- 
terests for the people. They believed in liberty 
but that of kings, lords, and commons, not of all 
the people. ^2 

Settled along the Appalachian highland, these 
new stocks continued to differ from those dwell- 
ing near the sea, especially on the slavery ques- 
tion. ^^ The natural endowment of the moun- 

33 Olmsted, Back Country, p. 134. 

30 Still, Underground Railroad, passim ; Siebert, Underground 
Eailroad, pp. 34, 35, 40, 42, 43, 48, 56, 59, 62, 64, 70, 145, 147; 
Drew, Refugee, pp. 72, 97, 114, 152, 335 and 373. 

31 The Journal of Negro History, I, pp. 132-162. 

32 Ibid., I, 138. 



32 A Century of Negro Migration 

taiiious section made slavery there unprofitable 
and tlie mountaineers bore it grievously that 
they were attached to commonwealths domi- 
nated by the radical pro-slavery element of the 
Soutii, who sacrificed all other interests to safe- 
^lard those of the peculiar institution. There 
developed a number of clashes in all of the 
legislatures and constitutional conventions of 
the Southern States along the Atlantic, but in 
every case the defenders of the interests of 
slavery won. AMien, therefore, slaves with the 
assistance of anti-slavery mountaineers began 
to esca]>e to the free States, they had little dif- 
ficulty in making their way through the Appa- 
lachian region, where the love of freedom had 
so set the people against slavery that although 
some of them yielded to the inevitable sin, they 
never made any systematic effort to protect it.^^ 
The development of the movement in these 
mountains was more than interesting. During 
tiie first quarter of the nineteenth century there 

" In the Appalachian mountains^ however, the settlers were 
loath to follow the fortunes of the ardent pro-slavery element. 
Actual abolition, for example, was never popular in western 
Virpnia, but the love of the people of that section for freedom 
kept them estranged from the slaveholding districts of the 
Bute, which by 1850 had completely committed themselves to 
the proHlavor>- propaf,'anda. In the Convention of 1829-30 
^I.^hu^ Kaid there existed in a great portion of the West (of 
Virjonia) a rooted antipathy to the slave. John Randolph was 
•I»rmod at the fanatical spirit on the subject of slavery, which 
WM trrowing in Virginia.— See the Jmrnal of Negro History, 
I, p. 142. 



Transplantation to the North 33 

were many ardent anti-slavery leaders in the 
mountains. These were not particularly inter- 
ested in the Negro but were determined to keep 
that soil for freedom that the settlers might 
there realize the ideals for which they had left 
their homes in Europe. When the industrial 
revolution with the attendant rise of the plan- 
tation cotton culture made abolition in the 
South improbable, some of them became col- 
onizationists, hoping to destroy the institution 
through deportation, which would remove the 
objection of certain masters who would free 
their slaves provided they were not left in the 
States to become a public charge.^^ Some of 
this sentiment continued in the mountains even 
until the Civil War. The highlanders, there- 
fore, found themselves involved in a continuous 
embroglio because they were not moved by re- 
actionary influences which were unifying the 
South for its bold eifort to make slavery a na- 
tional institution.^^ The other members of the 
mountaineer anti-slavery group became at- 
tached to the Underground Railroad system, en- 
deavoring by secret methods to place on free 
soil a sufficiently large number of fugitives to 
show a decided diminution in the South.^'^ John 
Brown, who communicated with the South 
through these mountains, thought that his work 

35 Adams, Neglected Period of Anti-Slavery. 

36 The Journal of Negro History, I, pp, 132-160. 

37 Siebert, Underground Bailroad, p. 166. 



34 ,1 Century of Negro Migration 

would be a success, if lie could change the situa- 
tion in one count)' in each of these States. 

The lines along wliich these Underground 
Hailroad operators moved connected naturally 
with the Quaker settlements established in free 
States and the favorable sections in the Appa- 
lachian region. Man}- of these workers were 
Quakers who had already established settle- 
ments of slaves on estates which they had pur- 
chased in the Northwest Territory. Among 
these were John Rankin, James Gilliland, Jesse 
Lockehart, Robert Dobbins, Samuel Crothers, 
Hugh L. Fullerton, and William Dickey. Thus 
they connected the heart of the South with the 
avenues to freedom in the North.^^ There were 
routes extending from this section into Ohio, 
Indiana, Illinois and Pennsylvania. Over the 
Ohio and Kentucky route culminating chiefly in 
Cleveland, Sandusky and Detroit, however, 
more fugitives made their way to freedom than 
through any other avenue,^^ partly too because 
thoy found the limestone caves very helpful for 
hiding by day. These operations extended even 
through Tennessee into northern Georgia and 
Alabama. Dillingham, Josiah Henson and Har- 
riet Tubman used these routes to deliver many 
a Negro from slavery. 

Tlie oi)portunity thus offered to help the op- 
pre«sed ]>rought forward a class of anti-slavery 
men, wlio went beyond the limit of merely ex- 

•• A<lam8, Neglected Period of Anti-Slavery. 
••Hicbcrt, Underground Hailroad, chaps, v and vi. 



Transplantation to the North 35 

pressing their horror of the evil. They believed 
that something should be done 'Ho deliver the 
poor that cry and to direct the wanderer in the 
right way. ' '^^ Translating into action what had 
long been restricted to academic discussion, 
these philanthropic workers ushered in a new 
era in the uplift of the blacks, making abolition 
more of a reality. The abolition element of the 
North then could no longer be considered an in- 
significant minority advocating a hopeless cause 
but a factor in drawing from the South a part 
of its slave population and at the same time of- 
fering asylum to the free Negroes whom the 
southerners considered undesirable.*^ Prom- 
inent among those who aided this migration in 
various ways were Benjamin Lundy of Tenn- 
essee and James G. Birney, a former slave- 
holder of Huntsville, Alabama, who manumitted 
his slaves and apprenticed and educated some 
of them in Ohio. 

This exodus of the Negroes to the free States 
promoted the migration of others of their race 
to Canada, a more congenial part beyond the 
borders of the United States. The movement 
from the free States into Canada, moreover, 
was contemporary with that from the South to 
the free States as will be evidenced by the fact 
that 15,000 of the 60,000 Negroes in Canada in 
1860 were free born. As Detroit was the chief 

40 An Address to the People of North Caroli/na on the Evils 
of Slavery. 

41 Washington, Story of the Negro, I, chaps, xii, xiii and xiv. 



36 A Century of Negro Migration 

gateway for them to Canada, most of these 
refugees settled in towns of Southern Ontario 
not far from that city. These were Dawn, Col- 
chester, Elgin, Dresden, Windsor, Sandwich, 
Bush, Wilberforce, Plamilton, St. Catherines, 
Chatham, Riley, Anderton, London, Maiden and 
Gonfield.^- And their coming to Canada was not 
checked even by request from their enemies that 
they be turned away from that country as unde- 
sirables, for some of the white people there wel- 
comed and assisted them. Canadians later ex- 
perienced a change in their attitude toward 
these refugees but these British Americans 
never made the life of the Negro there so in-' 
tolerable as was the case in some of the free 
States. 

]t should be observed here that this move- 
ment, unlike the exodus of the Negroes of to- 
day, affected an unequal distribution of the en- 
lightened Negroes." Those who are fleeing • 
from the South to-day are largely laborers seek- 
ing economic opportunities. The motive at 
work in the mind of the antebellum refugee was 
higher. In 1840 there were more intelligent 
blacks in the South than in the North but not so 
after 18,j0, despite the vigorous execution of the 
Fugitive Slave Law in some parts of the North. 
AVhilo the free Negro population of the slave 

*^ Father Ilcnson's Story of his own Life, p. 209; Coffin, 
Reminm:ence8, pp. 247-256; Howe, The Refugees from Slavery, 
p. 77;niavilan(l, A Woman's Wbrk, pp. 192, 193, 196. 

«s Woodson, The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 pn 
236-240. ' 



Transplantation to the North 37 

States increased only 23,736 from/ 1850 to 1860, 
that of the free States increased 29,839. In the 
South,' only Delaware, Maryland and North 
Carolina showed a noticeable increase in the 
number of free persons of color during the 
decade immediately preceding the Civil War. 
This element of the population had only slightly 
increased in Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, 
Tennessee, Virginia, Louisiana, South Carolina 
and the District of Columbia. The number of 
free Negroes of Florida remained constant. 
Those of Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas di- 
minished. In the North, of course, the migra- 
tion had caused the tendency to be in the other 
direction. With the exception of Maine, New 
Hampshire, Vermont and New York which had 
about the same free colored population in 1860 
as they had in 1850 there was a general increase 
in the number of Negroes in the free States. 
Ohio led in this respect, having had during this 
period an increase of 11,394.^^ A glance at the 
table on the accompanying page will show in de- 
tail the results of this migration. 

Statistics of the Free Colored Population of the United 

States 

state Population 

1850 1860 

Alabama 2,265 2,690 

Arkansas 608 144 

California 962 4,086 

Connecticut 7,693 8,627 

Delaware 18,073 19,829 

^ ^% United States Censuses of 1850 and 1860. 

4/; 



38 A Century of Negro Migration 

Florida ^32 

Georgia 2,931 

Illinois ^'^^^ 

Indiana 11^262 

Iowa 222 

Kentucky 10,011 

Louisiana 17,462 

Maine 1^256 

Kansas 

Maryland '^'4,723 

Massachusetts 9,0^4 

Michigan 2,583 

Minnesota 

Mississippi 930 

Missouri 2,618 

New Hampshire 520 

New Jersey 23,810 

New York 49,069 

North Carolina 27,463 

Ohio 25,279 

Oregon 

Pennsylvania 53,626 

Rhode Island 3,670 

South Carolina 8,960 

Tennessee 6,422 

Texas 397 

Vermont 718 

Virginia 54,333 

Wisconsin 635 

Territories: 

Colorado 

Dakota 

District of Columbia 10,059 

Minnesota 39 

Nebraska 

Nevada 

New Mexico 207 

Oregon 24 

Utah 22 

Wnhhington 30 

ToUl 434,495 070 



932 

3,500 

7,628 

11,428 

1,069 

10,684 

18,647 

1,327 

625 

83,942 

9,602 

6,797 

259 

773 

3,572 

494 

25,318 

49,005 

30,463 

36,673 

128 

56,949 

3,952 

9,914 

7,300 

355 

709 

58,042 

1,171 

46 



11,131 

67 
45 
85 

30 



CHAPTER III 

FIGHTING IT OUT ON FREE SOIL 

HOW, then, was this increasing influx of ref- 
ugees from the South to be received in 
the free States? In the older Northern States 
where there could be no danger of an Africani- 
zation of a large district, the coming of the Ne- 
groes did not cause general excitement, though 
at times the feeling in certain localities was sujf- 
ficient to make one think so.^ Fearing that the 
immigration of the Negroes into the North 
might so increase their numbers as to make 
them constitute a rather important part in the 
community, however, some free States enacted 
laws to restrict the privileges of the blacks. 

Free Negroes had voted in all the colonies ex- 
cept Georgia and South Carolina, if they had the 
property qualification; but after the sentiment 
attendant upon the struggle for the rights of 
man had passed away there set in a reaction. ^ 
Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky 
disfranchised all Negroes not long after the 
Revolution. They voted in North Carolina until 

1 The New Yorh Daily Advertiser, Sept. 22, 1800 ; The New 
YorTc Journal of Commerce, July 12^ 1834; and The Netv Yorjc 
Commercial Advertiser, July 12, 1834. 

2 Hart, Slavery and Aiolition, pp. 53, 82. 

4 89 



40 A Century of Negro Migration 

1835, when the State, feeling that this privilege 
of one class of Negroes might affect the enslave- 
ment of the other, prohibited it. The Northern 
States, following in their wake, set up the same 
barriers against the blacks. They were disfran- 
chised in New Jersey in 1807, in Connecticut in 
1814, and in Pennsylvania in 1838. In 1811 New 
York passed an act requiring the production of 
certificates of freedom from blacks or mulat- 
toes offering to vote. The second constitution, 
adopted in 1823, provided that no man of color, 
unless he had been for three years a citizen of 
that State and for one year next preceding any 
election, should be seized and possessed of a 
freehold estate, should be allowed to vote, al- 
though this qualification was not required of 
the whites. An act of 1824 relating to the gov- 
ernment of the Stockbridge Indians provided 
that no Negro or mulatto should vote in their 
councils.^ 

That increasing prejudice was to a great ex- 
tent the result of the immigration into the North 
of Negroes in the rough, was nowhere better 
illustrated than in Pennsylvania. Prior to 1800, 
and especially after 1780, when the State pro- 
vided for gradual emancipation, there was little 
race prejudice in Pennsylvania.'* When the re- 

s GoodcU, American Slave Code, Part III, chap, i; Hurd, The 
Luw of Freedom and Bondage, T, pp. 51, 61, 67, 81, 89, 101, 111; 
Woodson, The ICducation of the Negro Prior to 1861, pp. 151- 
178. 

* Benczct, Short Observations, p. 12. 



Fighting it Out on Free Soil 41 

actionary legislation of tlie South, made life 
intolerable for the Negroes, debasing them to 
the plane of beasts, many of the free people of 
color from Virginia, Maryland and Delaware 
moved or escaped into Pennsylvania like a 
steady stream during the next sixty years. As 
these Negroes tended to concentrate in towns 
and cities, they caused the supply of labor to ex- 
ceed the demand, lowering the wages of some 
and driving out of employment a number of 
others who became paupers and consequently 
criminals. There set in too an intense struggle 
between the black and white laborers,^ im- 
mensely accelerating the growth of race prej- 
udice, especially when the abolitionists and 
Quakers were giving Negroes industrial train- 
ing. 

The first exhibition of this prejudice was seen 
among the lower classes of white people, largely 
Irish and Germans, who, devoted to menial 
labor, competed directly with the Negroes. It 
did not require a long time, however, for this 
feeling to react on the higher classes of whites 
where Negroes settled in large groups. A 
strong protest arose from the menace of Negro 
paupers. An attempt was made in 1804 to com- 
pel free Negroes to maintain those that might 
become a public charge.® In 1813 the mayor, 
aldermen and citizens of Philadelphia asked 

5 Turner, The Negro in Pennsylvania, pp. 143-145. 
^Journal of Bouse, 18-23-24, p. 824. 



42 A Century of Negro Migration 

that free Negroes be taxed to support their 
j)oor.' Two Philadelphia representatives in the 
Pennsylvania Legislature had a committee ap- 
jx)inte<l in 1815 to consider the advisability of 
jireventing the immigration of Negroes.^ One 
of the causes then at work there was that the 
black i)opulation had recently increased to four 
thousand in Philadelphia and more than four 
thousand others had come into the city since 
the previous registration. 

They were arriving much, faster than they 
could be assimilated. The State of Pennsyl- 
vania had about exterminated slavery by 1840, 
having only 40 slaves that year and only a few 
hundred at any time after 1810. Many of these, 
of course, had not had time to make their way 
in life as freedmen. To show how much the 
rapid migration to that city aggravated the sit- 
uation under these circumstances one needs but 
note the statistics of the increase of the free 
people of color in that State. There were only 
22,492 such persons in Pennsylvania in 1810, 
but in 1820 there were 30,202, and in 1830 as 
many as 37,930. This number increased to 
47,854 by 1840, to 53,626 by 1850, and to 56,949 
by 1860. The undesirable aspect of the situa- 
tion was that most of the migrating blacks came 
in cnide form." "On arriving," therefore, 
says a cnntompornry, ''they abandoned them- 

^ Journal of Home, 1812-1813, pp. 481, 482. 

•Ibid., 1H14-1815, p. 101. 

• United States Ccnmscs, 1790-1860. 



Fighting it Out on Free Soil 43 

selves to all manner of debauchery and dissi- 
pation to the great annoyance of many cit- 
izens. "^° 

Thereafter followed a number of clashes de- 
veloping finally into a series of riots of a grave 
nature. Innocent Negroes, attacked at first for 
purposes of sport and later for sinister designs, 
were often badly beaten in the streets or even 
cut with knives. The offenders were not pun- 
ished and if the Negroes defended themselves 
they were usually severely penalized. In 1819 
three white women stoned a woman of color to 
death. ^^ A few youths entered a Negro church 
in Philadelphia in 1825 and by throwing pepper 
to give rise to suffocating fumes caused a panic 
which resulted in the death of several Negroes.^ ^ 
When the citizens of New Haven, Connecticut, 
arrayed themselves in 1831 against Ihe plan to 
establish in that city a Negro manual labor col- 
lege, there was held in Philadelphia a meeting 
which passed resolutions enthusiastically en- 
dorsing this effort to rid the community of the 
evil of the immigration of free Negroes. There 
arose also the custom of driving Negroes away 
from Independence Square on the Fourth of 
July because they were neither considered nor 
desired as a part of the body politic.^ ^ 

10 Brannagan, Serious Remonstrances, p. 68. 

11 Turner, The Negro in Pennsylvania, p. 145; The Phila- 
delphia Gazette, June 30, 1819. 

12 Democratic Press, Philadelphia Gazette, Nov. 21, 1825. 

13 Turner, The Negro in Pennsylvania, p. 146. 



44 A Century of Negro Migration 

It was thought that in the state of feeling of 
the thirties that the Negro would be annihilated. 
l^e Tocqueville also observed that the Negroes 
were more detested in the free States than in 
those where they were held as slaves.^^ There 
had been such a reaction since 1800 that no posi- 
tions of consequence were open to Negroes, 
however well educated they might be, and the 
education of the blacks which was once vig- 
orously prosecuted there became unpopular .^^ 
This was especially true of Harrisburg and 
Philadelphia but by no means confined to large 
cities. The Philadelphia press said nothing in 
behalf of the race. It was generally thought 
that freedom had not been an advantage to the 
Negro and that instead of making progress they 
had filled jails and almshouses and multiplied 
l)est holes to afflict the cities with, disease and 
crime. 

The Negroes of York carefully worked out in 
1S03 a plan to bura the city. Incendiaries set 
on fire a number of houses, eleven of which were 
destroyed, whereas there were other attempts 
at a general destruction of the city. The au- 
thorities arrested a number of Negroes but ran 
tlie risk of having the jail broken open by their 
Bymi>athizing fellowmen. After a reign of ter- 
ror for lialf a week, order was restored and 
twenty of the accused were convicted of arson. 

>« Do Tocqueville, Democracy in America, II, pp. 292, 294. 
" Turner, The Negro in Pennsylvania, p. 148. 



Fighting it Out on Free Soil 45 

In 1820 there occurred so many conflagrations 
that a vigilance committee was organized.^® 
"Whether or not the Negroes were guilty of the 
crime is not known but numbers of them left 
either on account of the fear of punishment or 
because of the indignities to which they were 
subjected. Numerous petitions, therefore, came 
before the legislature to stop the immigration of 
Negroes. It was proposed in 1840 to tax all free 
Negroes to assist them in getting out of the 
State for colonization.^"^ The citizens of Lehigh 
County asked the authorities in 1830 to expel 
all Negroes and persons of color found in the 
State.^^ Another petition prayed that they be 
deprived of the freedom of movement. Bills 
embodying these ideas were frequently consid- 
ered but they were never passed. 

Stronger opposition than this, however, was 
manifested in the form of actual outbreaks on a 
large scale in Philadelphia. The immediate 
cause of this first real clash was the abolition 
agitation in the city in 1834 following the excit- 
ing news of other such disturbances a few 
months prior tO' this date in several northern 
cities. A group of boys started the riot by de- 
stroying a Negro resort. A mob then proceeded 
to the Negro district, where white and colored 
men engaged in a fight with clubs and stones. 

16 Turner, The Negro in Pennsylvania, pp. 152, 153. 
^''African Bepository, VIII, pp. 125, 283; Journal of House, 
1840, I, pp. 347, 508', 614, 622, 623, 680. 
^s Journal of Senate, 1850, I, pp. 454, 479. 



4G A Century of Negro Migration 

The next day the mob ruined the African Pres- 
byterian Church and attacked some Negroes, de- 
stroying their property and beating them merci- 
lessly. ^ This riot continued for three days. A 
connnittee appointed to inquire into the causes 
of the riot reported that the aim of the rioters 
had been to make the Negroes go away because 
it was believed that their labor was depriving 
them of work and because the blacks had 
shielded criminals and had made such noise and 
disorder in their churches as to make them a 
nuisance. It seemed that the most intelligent 
and well-to-do people of Philadelphia keenly 
felt it that the city had thus been disgraced, but 
the' mob spirit continued.^ '^ 

The very next year was marked by the same 
sort of disorder. Because a half-witted Negro 
attempted to murder a white man, a large mob 
stirred up the city again. There was a repeti- 
tion of the beating of Negroes and of the de- 
struction of property while the police, as tbe 
year before, were so inactive as to give rise to 
the charge that they were accessories to the 
riot.-" In 1838 there occurred another outbreak 
which developed into an anti-abolition riot, as 
the jniblic mind had been much exercised by the 
discussions of abolitionists and by their close 
social contact with the Negroes. The clash came 

>*Thi8 is well narrated in Turner's Negro in Pennsylvania, 
p. IfiO, and in Du Bois's The Vhiladelphia Negro, p. 27. 
»« Turner, live Negro in Pmnsylvania, pp. 161, 162. 



Fighting it Out on Free Soil 47 

on txo9 seventeenth of May when Pennsylvania 
Hall, the center of abolition agitation, was 
burned. Fighting between the blacks and whites 
ensued the following night when the Colored 
Orphan Asylum was attacked and a Negro 
church burned. Order was finally restored for 
the good of all concerned, but that a majority of 
the people sympathized with the rioters was evi- 
denced by the fact that the committee charged 
with investigating the disturbance reported that 
the mob was composed of strangers who could 
not be recognized.^^ It is well to note here that 
this riot occurred the year the Negroes in Penn- 
sylvania were disfranchised. 

Following the example of Philadelphia, Pitts- 
burgh had a riot in 1839 resulting in the mal- 
treatment of a number of Negroes and the de- 
molishing of some of their houses. When the 
Negroes of Philadelphia paraded the city in 
1842, celebrating the abolition of slavery in the 
West Indies, there ensued a battle led by the 
whites who undertook to break up the proces- 
sion. Along with the beating and killing of the 
usual number went also the destruction of the 
New African Hall and the Negro Presbyterian 
church. The grand jury charged with the in- 
quiry into the causes reported that the proces- 
sion was to be blamed. For several years there- 
after the city remained quiet until 1849 when 
there occurred a raid on the blacks by the Killers 

21 Turner, The Negro in Pennsylvania, pp. 162, 163. 



48 A Century of Negro Migration 

of Moyamensing, using firearms with Vxiich 
many were wounded. This disturbance was 
finally quelled by aid of the militia.^^ 

These clashes sometimes reached farther 
north than the free States bordering on the 
slave commonwealths. Mobs broke up aboli- 
tion meetings in the city of New York in 1834 
when there were sent to Congress numerous pe- 
titions for the abolition of slavery. This mob 
even assailed such eminent citizens as Arthur 
and Lewis Tappan, mainly on account of their 
friendly attitude toward the Negroes. ^^ On Oc- 
tober 21, 1834, the same feeling developed in 
Utica, where was to be held an anti-slavery 
meeting according to previous notice. The six 
hundred delegates who assembled there were 
warned to disband. A mob then organized itself 
and drove the delegates from the town. That 
same month the people of Palmyra, New York, 
held a meeting at which they adopted resolu- 
tions to the effect that owners of houses or ten- 
ements in that town occupied by blacks of the 
character complained of be requested to use all 
their rightful means to clear their premises of 
such occupants at the earliest possible period; 
and that it be recommended that such pro- 
prietors refuse to rent the same thereafter to 
any person of color whatever.^^ In New York 

"Turner, Tin; Negro in Vennsylvania, p. 163; and The 
Liberator, July 4, 1835. 

" The Liberator, Oct. 24, 1834. 
" Ibid., October 24, 1834. 



Fighting it Out on Free Soil 49 

Negroes were excluded from places of amuse- 
ment and public conveyances and segregated 
in places of worship. In the draft riots which 
occurred there in 1863, one of the aims of the 
mobs was to assassinate Negroes and to destroy 
their property. They burned the Colored Or- 
plan Asylum of that city and hanged Negroes 
to lamp-posts. 

The situation in parts of New England was 
not much better. For fear of the evils of an 
increasing population of free persons of color 
the people of Canaan, New Hampshire, broke 
up the Noyes Academy because it decided to 
admit Negro students, thinking that many of 
the race might thereby be encouraged to come to 
that State.-^ When Prudence Crandall estab- 
lished in Canterbury, Connecticut, an academy 
to which she decided to admit Negroes, the 
mayor, selectmen and citizens of the city pro- 
tested, and when their protests failed to deter 
this heroine, they induced the legislature to en- 
act a special law covering the case and invoked 
the measure to have Prudence Crandall impris- 
oned because she would not desist.^^ This very 

25 Jay, An Inquiry, pp. 28-29. 

26 An Act in Addition to an Act for the Admission cmd Set- 
tlement of Inhabitants of Towns. 

1. Whereas attempts have been made to establish literary- 
institutions in this State for the instruction of colored people 
belonging to other States and countries, which would tend to 
the great increase of the colored population of the State, and 
thereby to the injury of the people, therefore; 



50 A Century of Negro Migration 

law and the arguments upholding it justified the 
drastic measure on the ground that an increase 

Be it resolved that no person shall set up or establish in this 
State, any school, academy, or literary institution for the 
instruction or education of colored persons, who are not inhab- 
itants of this State, nor instruct or teach in any school, acad- 
emy, or other literary institution whatever in this State, or 
harbor or board for the purpose of attending or being taught 
or instructed in any such schoolj academy, or other literary 
institution, any person who is not an inhabitant of any town in 
this State, without the consent in writing, first obtained of a 
majority of the civil authority, and also of the selectmen of the 
town in which such schools, academy, or literary institution is 
situated; and each and every person who shall knowingly do 
any act forbidden as aforesaid, or shall be aiding or assisting 
therein, shall for the first offense forfeit and pay to the treas- 
urer of this State a fine of one hundred dollars and for the 
second ofifense shall forfeit and pay a fine of two hundred dol- 
lars, and so double for every offense of which he or she shall be 
convicted. And all informing officers are required to make 
due presentment of all breaches of this act. Provided that 
nothing in this act shall extend to any district school estab- 
lished in any school society under the laws of this State or to 
any incorporated school for instruction in this State. 

2. Any colored person not an inhabitant of this State who 
shall reside in any town therein for the purpose of being in- 
structed as aforesaid, may be removed in the manner prescribed 
in the sixth and seventh sections of the act to which this is an 
addition. 

3. Any person not an inhabitant of this State who shall 
reside in any town therein for the purpose of being instructed 
an aforesaid, shall be an admissible witness in all prosecutions 
under the first section of this act, and may be compelled to 
givo testimony therein, notwithstanding anything in this act, 
or in the act last aforesaid. 

4. That 80 much of the seventh section of this act to which 
thin is an addition as may provide for the infliction of cor- 
poral punishment, be and the same is hereby repealed.— See 
Kurd's Law of Freedom and Bondage, II, pp. 45-46. 



Fighting it Out on Free Soil 51 

in the colored population would be an injury to 
the people of that State. 

In the new commonwealths formed out of west- 
ern territory, there was the same fear as to 
Negro domination and consequently there fol- 
lowed the wave of legislation intended in some 
cases not only to withhold from the Negro set- 
tlers the exercise of the rights of citizenship but 
to discourage and even to prevent them from 
coming into their territory.^^ The question as 
to what should be done with the Negro was early 
an issue in Ohio. It came up in the constitu- 
tional convention of 1803, and provoked some 
discussion, but that body considered it sufficient 
to settle the matter for the time being by merely 
leaving the Negroes, Indians and foreigners out 
of the pale of the newly organized body politic 
by conveniently incorporating the word white 
throughout the constitution.^^ It was soon evi- 
dent, however, that the matter had not been 
settled, and the legislature of 1804 had to give 
serious consideration to the immigration of Ne- 
groes into that State. It was, therefore, enacted 
that no Negro or mulatto should remain there 
permanently, unless he could furnish a certificate 
of freedom issued by some court, that all Ne- 
groes in that commonwealth should be regis- 

27 So many Negroes working on the rivers between the slave 
and free States helped fugitives to escape that there arose a 
clamor for the discourage of colored employees. 

28 Constitution of Ohio, article I, sections 2, 6. The Journal 
of Negro Sistory, I, p. 2. 



52 A Century of Negro Migration 

tered before the following June, and that no 
man should employ a Negro who failed to com- 
ply with these conditions. Should one be de- 
tected in hiring, harboring or hindering the cap- 
ture of a fugitive black, he was liable to a fine 
of $50 and his master could recover pay for the 
service of his slave to the amount of fifty cents 
a day.2* 

As this legislature did not meet the demands 
of those who desired further to discourage 
Negro immigration, the Legislature of 1807 was 
induced to enact a law to the effect that no Negro 
should be permitted to settle in Ohio, unless he 
could within 20 days give a bond to the amount 
of $500 for his good behavior and assurance that 
he would not become a public charge. This 
measure provided also for raising the fine for 
concealing a fugitive from $50 to $100, one half 
of which should go to the person upon the tes- 
timony of whom the conviction should be se- 
cured. ^"^ Negro evidence in a case to which a 
white was a party was declared illegal. In 1830 
Negroes were excluded from service in the State 
militia, in 1831 they were deprived of the priv- 
ilege of sennng on juries, and in 1838 they were 
denied the right of having their children edu- 
catcHl at the expense of the State.^i 

In Indiana the situation was worse than in 

a" Laws of Ohio, II, p. 53. 
to Jmwh of Ohio, V, p. 53. 
•> Hitchcock, The Negro in Ohio, pp. 41, 42. 



Fighting it Out on Free Soil 53 

Ohio. We have already noted above how the 
settlers in the southern part endeavored to make 
that a slave State. When that had, after all but 
being successful, seemed impossible the State 
enacted laws to prevent or discourage the influx 
of free Negroes and to restrict the privileges of 
those already there. In 1824 a stringent law for 
the return of fugitives was passed.^^ The ex- 
pulsion of free Negroes was a matter of concern 
and in 1831 it was provided that unless they 
could give bond for their behavior and support 
they could be removed. Otherwise the county 
overseers could hire out such Negroes to the 
highest bidder.^3 Negroes were not allowed to 
attend schools maintained at the public expense, 
might not give evidence against a white man 
and could not intermarry with white persons. 
They might, however, serve as witnesses against 
Negroes.^* 

In the same way the free Negroes met dis- 
couragement in Illinois. They suffered from all 
the disabilities imposed on their class in Ohio 
and Indiana and were denied the right to 
sue for their liberty in the courts. When there 
arose many abolitionists who encouraged the 
coming of the fugitives from labor in the South, 
one element of the citizens of Illinois unwilling 
to accept this unusual influx of members of an- 

32 Eevised Laws of Indiana, 1831, p. 278. 

33 Perkins, A Digest of the Declaration of the Supreme Court 
of Indiana, p. 590. Laws of 1853, p. 60. 

34 Gavin and Hordj Indiana Eevised Statutes, 1862, p. 452. 



54 A Century of Negro Migration 

other race passed the drastic law of 1853 pro- 
hibiting the immigration. It provided for the 
prosecution of any person bringing a Negro into 
the State and also for arresting and fining any 
Negro $50, should he appear there and remain 
longer than ten da5\s. If he proved to be unable 
to pay the fine, he could be sold to any person 
who could pay the cost of the trial.^^ 

In Michigan the situation was a little better 
but, with the waves of hostile legislation then 
sweeping over the new^^ commonwealths, Mich- 
igan was not allowed to constitute altogether 
an exception. Some of this intense feeling 
found expression in the form of a law hostile to 
the Negro, this being the act of 1827, which pro- 
vided for the registration of all free persons of 
color and for the exclusion from the territory of 
all blacks who could not jDroduce a certificate to 
the effect that they were free. Free persons of 
color were also required to file bonds with one 
or more freehold sureties in the penal sum of 
$500 for their good behavior, and the bondsmen 

85 Illinois Statutes, 1853, sections 1-4, p. 8. 

3«In 1760 there were both African and Pawnee slaves in 
Detroit, 96 of them in 1773 and 175 in 1782. The usual effort 
to have slavcrj' legalized was made in 1773. There were seven- 
teen slaves in Detroit in 1810 held by virtue of the exceptions 
made under the British rule prior to the ratification of Jay's 
treaty. Advertisements of runaway slaves appeared in Detroit 
papers as late as 1S27. Furthermore, there were thirty-two 
BlavcH in Michigan in 1830 but by 1836 all had died or had 
Wen manumitted.— See Farmer, History of Detroit and Michi- 
gan, I, p. 344. 



Fighting it Out on Ft^ee Soil 55 

were expected to provide for their maintenance, 
if tliey failed to support themselves. Failure to 
comply with this law meant expulsion from the 
territory.^^ 

The opposition to the Negroes immigrating 
into the new West was not restricted to the en- 
actment of laws which in some cases were never 
enforced. Several communities took the law 
into their own hands. During these years when 
the Negroes were seeking freedom in the North- 
west Territory and when free blacks were be- 
ing established there by .philanthropists, it 
seemed to the southern uplanders fleeing from 
slavery in the border States and foreigners 
seeking fortunes in the new world that they 
might possibly be crowded out of this new ter- 
ritory by the Negroes. Frequent clashes, there- 
fore, followed after they had passed through a 
period of toleration and dependence on the ex- 
ecution of the hostile laws. The clashes of the 
greatest consequences occurred in the Northwest 
Territory where a larger number of uplanders 
from the South had gone, some to escape the ill 
effects of slavery, and others to hold slaves if 
possible, and when that seemed impossible, to 
exclude the blacks altogether.^^ This persecu- 
tion of the Negroes received also the hearty co- 

37 Laws of Michigan, 1827 ; and Campbell, Political History 
of Michigan, p. 246. 

^& Proceedings of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Convention, 1835, 
p. 19. 

5 



50 A Century of Negro Migration 

operation of the foreign element, who, being an 
undeveloped class, had to do menial labor in 
competition with the blacks. The feeling of the 
foreigners was especially mischievous for the 
reasons that they were, like the Negroes, at first 
settled in large numbers in urban communities. 
Generally speaking, the feeling was like that 
exhibited by the Germans in Mercer County, 
Ohio. The citizens of this frontier community, 
in registering their protest against the settling 
of Negroes there, adopted the following resolu- 
tions: 

Resolved, That we will not live among Negroes, as 
we have settled here first, we have- fully determined 
that we will resist the settlement of blacks and mulat- 
toes in this county to the full extent of our means, the 
bayonet not excepted. 

Resolved, That the blacks of this county be, and 
they are hereby respectfully requested to leave the 
country on or before the first day of March, 1847 ; and 
in the ease of their neglect or refusal to comply with 
this request, we pledge ourselves to remove them, 
peace fnlhj if we can, forcibly if we must. 

Resolved, That we who are here assembled, pledge 
ourselves not to employ or trade with any black or 
mulatto person, in any manner whatever, or permit 
them to have any grinding done at our mills, after the 
first day of January next.^* 

In 1827 there arose a storm of protest on the 
occasion of the settling of seventy freedmen in 

«» African Bcpository, XXTII, p. 70. 



Fighting it Out on Free Soil 57 

Lawrence County, Ohio, by a philanthropic mas- 
ter of Pittsylvania County, Virginia.^^ On 
Black Friday, January 1, 1830, eighty Negroes 
were driven out of Portsmouth, Ohio, at the re- 
quest of one or two hundred white citizens set 
forth in an urgent memorial.^^ So many Ne- 
groes during these years concentrated at Cin- 
cinnati that the laboring element forced the exe- 
cution of the almost dead law requiring free 
Negroes to produce certificates and give bonds 
for their behavior and support.^^ ^ j^nob at- 
tacked the homes of the blacks, killed a number 
of them, and forced twelve hundred others to 
leave for Canada West, where they established 
the settlement known as Wilberforce. 

In 1836 another mob attacked and destroyed 
there the press of James Gr. Birney, the editor 
of the Philanthropist, because of the encourage- 
ment his abolitionist organ gave to the immi- 
grating Negroes.^3 But in 1841 came a decid- 
edly systematic effort on the part of foreigners 
and proslavery sympathizers to kill off and 
drive out the Negroes who were becoming too 
well established in that city and who were giv- 
ing offense to white men who desired to deal 
with them as Negroes were treated in the South. • 
The city continued in this excited state for about 
a week. There were brought into play in the 

40 Ohio state Journal, May 3, 1827. 

41 Evans, A History of Sciote County, Ohio, p. 643. 

42 African Eepository, Y, p. 185. 

43 Howe, Historical Collections, pp. 225-226. 



58 A Century of Negro Migration 

upheaval the police of tlie city and the State 
militia before the shooting of the Negroes and 
burning of their homes could be checked. So 
far as is known, no white men were punished, 
although a few of them were arrested. Some 
Negroes were committed to prison during the 
fray. They were thereafter either discharged 
upon producing certificates of nativity or giving 
bond or were indefinitely held.^'* 

In southern Indiana and Illinois the same 
condition obtained. Observing the situation in 
Indiana, a contributor of Niles Register re- 
marked, in 1818, upon the arrival there of sixty 
or seventy liberated Negroes sent by the society 
of Friends of North Carolina, that they were a 
species of population that was not acceptable to 
the people of that State, ''nor indeed to any 
other, whether free or slaveholding, for they can- 
not rise and become like other men, unless in 
countries where their own color predominates, 
but miist always remain a degraded and inferior 
class of persons without the hope of much bet- 
tering their condition. "^^ 

The Indiana Farmer, voicing the sentiment 
of that same community, regretted the increase 
of this population that seemed to be enlarging 
the number sent to that territory. The editor 
insisted that the community which enjoys the 

<« Jhid., p. 226, and The Cincirmati Daily Gazette, Sept. 14, 
1841. 
*iiNUcs Hegister, XXX, 416. 



Fighting it Out on Free Soil 59 

benefits of the blacks' labor should also suffer 
all the consequences. Since the people of In- 
diana derived no advantage from slavery, he 
begged that they be excused from its inconveni- 
ences. Most of the blacks that migrated there, 
moreover, possessed, thought he, ''feelings quite 
unprepared to make good citizens. A sense of 
inferiority early impressed on their minds, des- 
titute of every thing but bodily power and hav- 
ing no character to lose, and no prospect of ac- 
quiring one, even did they know its value, they 
are prepared for the commission of any act, 
when the prospect of evading punishment is 
favorable. ' '''^ 

With the exception of such centers as Eden, 
Upper Alton, Bellville and Chicago, this antag- 
onistic attitude was general also in the State of 
Illinois. The Negroes were despised, abused and 
maltreated as persons who had no rights that 
the white man should respect. Even in Detroit, 
Michigan, in 1833 a fracas was started by an at- 
tack on Negroes. Because a courageous group 
of them had effected the rescue and escape of 
one Thornton Blackburn and his wife who had 
been arrested by the sheriff as alleged fugitives 
from Kentucky, the citizens invoked the law of 
1827, to require free Negroes to produce a cer- 
tificate and furnish bonds for their behavior and 
support.^'^ The anti-slavery sentiment there, 

^^NUes Begister, XXX, 416; African depository, III, p. 25. 
47 Farmer, History of Detroit and Michigan, I, chap. 48. 



GO A Century of Negro Migration 

however, was so strong tliat the law was not long 
rigidly enforced.-*^ And so it was in several 
other parts of the West which, however, were 
exceptional."*" 

«8 There was the usual effort to have slavery legalized in 
Michigan. At the time of the fire in 1805 there were six 
colored men and nine colored women in the town of Detroit. 
In 1807 there were so many of them that Governor Hiill 
organized a company of colored militia. Joseph Campan 
owned ten at one time. The importation of slaves was dis- 
continued after September 17, 1792^ by act of the Canadian 
Parliament which provided also that all born thereafter should 
be free at the age of twenty-five. The Ordinance of 1787 had 
by its sixth article prohibited it. 

<» In 1836 a colored man traveling in the West to Cleveland 
said: 

"I have met with good treatment at every place on my 
journey, even better than what I expected under present cir- 
cumstances. I will relate an incident that took place on board 
the steamboat, which will give an idea of the kind treatment 
with which I have met. When I took the boat at Erie, it being 
rainy and somewhat disagreeable, I took a cabin passage, to 
which the captain had not the least objection. When dinner 
was announced, I intended not to go to the first table but the 
mate came and urged me to take a seat. I accordingly did and 
was called upon to carve a large saddle of beef which was 
before me. This I performed accordingly to the best of my 
ability. No one of the company manifested any objection or 
seemed anyA^'ays disturbed by my presence." — Extract of a 
letter from a colored gentleman traveling to the West, Cleve- 
land, Ohio, August 11, 1836.— See The FMlanthropist, Oct. 21, 
1636. 



CHAPTER IV 

COLONIZATION AS A EEMEDY FOR MIGRATION 

BECAUSE of these untoward circumstances 
consequent to the immigration of free 
Negroes and fugitives into the North, their en- 
emies, and in some cases their well-intentioned 
friends, advocated the diversion of these ele- 
ments to foreign soil. Benezet and Brannagan 
had the idea of settling the Negroes on the pub- 
lic lands in the West largely to relieve the sit- 
uation in the North.^ Certain anti-slavery men 
of Kentucky, as we have observed, recommended 
the same. But this was hardly advocated at all 
by the farseeing white men after the close of 
the first quarter of the nineteenth century. It 
was by that time very clear that white men 
would want to occupy all lands within the pres- 
ent limits of the United States. Few statesmen 
dared to encourage migration to Canada because 
the large number of fugitives who had al- 
ready escaped there had attached to that region 
the stigma of being an asylum for fugitives 
from the slave States. 

The most influential people who gave thought 
to this question finally decided that the coloniza- 
tion of the Negro in Africa was the only solu- 

1 The African Eepository, XVI, p. 22. 

61 



02 A Century of Negro Migration 

tion of the problem. The plan of African col- 
onization appealed more generally to the people 
of both North and South than the other efforts, 
which, at best, could do no more than to offer 
local or temporary relief. The African coloni- 
zationists proceeded on the basis that the Ne- 
groes had no chance for racial development in 
this country. They could secure no kind of 
honorable employment, could not associate with 
congenial white friends whose minds and pur- 
suits might operate as a stimulus upon their in- 
dustry and could not rise to the level of the suc- 
cessful professional or business men found 
around them. In short, they must ever be 
hewers of wood and drawers of water.^ 

To emphasize further the necessity of emi- 
gration to Africa the advocates of deportation 
to foreign soil generally referred to the condi- 
tion of the migrating Negroes as a case in evi- 
dence. *'So long," said one, "as you must sit, 
stand, walk, ride, dwell, eat and sleep here and 
the Negro there, he cannot be free in any part 
of the country. "3 This idea working through 
the minds of northern men, who had for years 
thought merely of the injustice of slavery, be- 
gan to change their attitude toward the aboli- 
tionists who had never undertaken to solve the 
problem of the blacks who were seeking refuge 

: The African Hepository, XVI, p. 23; Alexander, A History 
of Colonuration, p. 347. 
»/6W., XVr, p. 113. 



Colonization a Remedy for Migration 63 

in the North. Many thinkers controlling pub- 
lic opinion then gave audience to the coloniza- 
tionists and circles once closed to them were 
thereafter opened.^ 

There was, therefore, a tendency toward a 
more systematic effort than had hitherto char- 
acterized the endeavors of the colonizationists. 
The objects of their philanthropy were not to 
be stolen away and hurried off to an uncongenial 
land for the oppressed. They were in accord- 
ance with the exigencies of their new situation 
to be prepared by instruction in mechanic arts, 
agriculture, science and Biblical literature that 
some might lead in the higher pursuits and 
others might skilfully serve their fellows.^ 
Private enterprise was at first depended on to 
carry out the schemes but it soon became evi- 
dent that a better method was necessary. Fi- 
nally out of the proposals of various thinkers 
and out of the actual colonization feats of Paul 
Cuffe, a Negro, came a national meeting for 
this purpose, held in Washington, December, 
1816, and the organization of the American Col- 
onization Society. This meeting was attended 
by some of the most prominent men in the 
United States, among whom were Henry Clay, 
Francis S. Key, Bishop William Meade, John 
Randolph and Judge Bushrod Washington. 

4 Jay, An Inquiry, pp. 25, 29 ; Hodgkin, An Inquiry, p. 31. 

5 The African Bepository, IV, p. 276; Griffin, A Flea for 
Africa, p. 65. 



64 A Century of Negro Migration 

The American Colonization Society, however, 
failed to facilitate the movement of the free 
Negro from the South and did not promote the 
general welfare of the race. The reasons for 
these failures are many. In the first place, the 
society was all things to all men. To the anti- 
slavery man whose ardor had been dampened 
by the meagre results obtained by his agitation, 
the scheme was the next best thing to remove 
the objections of slaveholders who had said they 
would emancipate their bondsmen, if they could 
be assured of their being deported to foreign 
soil. To the radical proslavery man and to the 
northerner hating the Negro it was well 
adapted to rid the country of the free persons 
of color whom they regarded as the pariahs of 
society." Furthermore, although the Coloniza- 
tion Society became seemingly popular and the 
various States organized branches of it and 
raised money to promote the movement, the 
slaveholders as a majority never reached the 
position of parting with their slaves and the 
country would not take such radical action as to 
compel free Negroes to undergo expatriation 
when militant abolitionists were fearlessly de- 
nouncing the scheme."^ 

The free people of color themselves were not 
only not anxious to go but bore it grievously 

«Jay, An Inquiry, passim; The Journal of Negro History, 
I, F'p. 27G-301 ; and Stebbins, Facts and Opinions, pp. 200-201. 
^ Hart, Slavery and Abolitioti, p. 237. 



Colonization a Remedy for Migration 65 

that any one should even suggest that they 
should be driven from the country in which they 
were born and for the independence of which 
their fathers had died. They held indignation 
meetings throughout the North to denounce the 
scheme as a selfish policy inimical to the inter- 
ests of the people of color.^ Branded thus as 
the inveterate foe of the blacks both slave and 
free, the American Colonization Society effected 
the deportation of only such Negroes as south- 
ern masters felt disposed to emancipate from 
time to time and a few others induced to go. As 
the industrial revolution early changed the as- 
pect of the economic situation in the South so 
as to make slavery seemingly profitable, few 
masters ever thought of liberating their slaves. 

Scarcely any intelligent Negroes except those 
who, for economic or religious reasons were in- 
terested, availed themselves of this opportunity 
to go to the land of their ancestors. From the 
reports of the Colonization Society we learn that 
from 1820 to 1833 only 2,885 Negroes were sent 
to Africa by the Society. Furthermore, more 
than 2,700 of this number were taken from the 
slave States, and about two thirds of these were 
slaves manumitted on the condition that they 
would emigrate.^ Later statistics show the 
same tendency. By 1852, 7,836 had been de- 

8 The Journal of Negro History, I, pp. 284-296; Garrison, 
Thoughts on Colonization, p. 204. 

s The African Eepository, XXXIII, p. 1 17. 



GG A Century of Negro Migration 

l)ortGd from the United States to Liberia. 2,720 
of these were born free, 204 purchased their 
freedom, 3,868 were emancipated in view of 
their going to Liberia and 1,044 were liberated 
Africans returned by the United States Gov- 
ernment.^'' Considering the fact that there were 
434,495 free persons of color in this country in 
1850 and 488,070 in 1860, the colonizationists 
saw that the very element of the population 
which the movement was intended to send out 
of the country had increased rather than de- 
creased. It is clear, then, that the American 
Colonization Society, though regarded as a fac- 
tor to play an important part in promoting the 
exodus of the free Negroes to foreign soil, was 
an inglorious failure. 

Colonization in other quarters, however, was 
not abandoned. A colony of Negroes in Texas 
was contemplated in 1833 prior to the time when 
the republic became independent of Mexico, as 
slavery was not at first assured in that State. 
The Neiv York Commercial Advertiser had no 
objection to the enterprise but felt that there 
were natural obstacles such as a more expensive 
conveyance than that to Monrovia, the high 
l)rice of land in that country, the Catholic re- 
ligion to which Negroes were not accustomed to 
conform, and their lack of knowledge of the 
Spanish language. The editor observed that 
some who had emigrated to Hayti a few years 

JO The African Bepository, XXIII, p. 117. 



Colonization a Remedy for Migration 67 

before became discontented because tliey did not 
know the language. Louisiana, a slave State, 
moreover, would not suffer near its borders a 
free Negro republic to serve as an asylum for 
refugees." Tbe Richmond Whig saw the actual 
situation in dubbing the scheme as chimerical 
for the reason that a more unsuitable country 
for the blacks did not exist. Socially and polit- 
ically it would never suit the Negroes. Already 
a great number of adventurers from the United 
States had gone to Texas and fugitives from 
justice from Mexico, a fierce, lawless and tur- 
bulent class, would give the Negroes little 
chance there, as the Negroes could not contend 
with the Spaniard and the Creole. The editor 
believed that an inferior race could never exist 
in safety surrounded by a superior one despis- 
ing them. Colonization in Africa was then 
urged and the efforts of the blacks to go else- 
where were characterized as doing mischief at 
every turn to defeat the ''enlightened plan" for 
the amelioration of the Negroes. ^^ 

It was still thought possible to induce the Ne- 
groes to go to some congenial foreign land, al- 
though few of them would agree to emigrate to 
Africa. Not a few Negroes began during the 
two decades immediately preceding the Civil 
War to think more favorably of African col- 
onization and a still larger number, in view of 

11 The African Eepository, IX, pp. 86-88. 

12 Ibid., IX, p. 88, 



/ 



68 A Century of Negro Migration 

the increasing disabilities fixed upon their class, 
tliou^rlit of migrating to some country nearer to 
the United States. Much was said about Cen- 
tral America, but British Guiana and the West 
Indies proved to be the most inviting fields to 
the latter-day Negro colonizationists. This idea 
was by no means new, for Jefferson in his fore- 
sight had, in a letter to Governor Edward Coles, 
of Illinois, in 1814, shown the possibilities of 
colonization in the West Indies. He felt that 
because Santo Domingo had become an inde- 
pendent Negro republic it would offer a solution 
of the problem as to where the Negroes should 
be colonized. In this way these islands would 
become a sort of safety valve for the United 
States. He became more and more convinced 
that all the West Indies would remain in the 
hands of the people of color, and a total expul- 
sion of the whites sooner or later would take 
place. It was high time, he thought, that Amer- 
icans should foresee the bloody scenes which 
their children certainly, and possibly they them- 
selves, would have to wade through.^^ 

i»"If something is not done, and soon done," said he, "we 
shall be the murderers of our own children. The ' murmura 
rrnturos nouiis prudcntia ventos' has already reached us (from 
Banto Domingo) ; the revolutionary storm, now sweeping the 
Rlobe will be upon us, and happy if we make timely provision 
to give it an easy passage over our land. Prom the present 
Btnto of things in Europe and America, the day which begins 
our combustion must be near at hand; and only a single spark 
i« wanting to make that day to-morrow. If we had begun 
Booner, we might probably have been allowed a lengthier opera- 



Colonization a Remedy for Migration 69 

The movement to the West Indies was accel- 
erated by other factors. After the emancipation 
in those islands in the thirties, there had for 
some years been a dearth of labor. Desiring to 
enjoy their freedom and living in a climate 
where there was not much struggle for life, the 
freedmen either refused to work regularly or 
wandered about purposely from year to year. 
The islands in which sugar had once played a 
conspicuous part as the foundation of their in- 
dustry declined and something had to be done 
to meet this exigency. In the forties and fifties, 
therefore, there came to the United States a 
number of labor agents whose aim was to set 
forth the inviting aspect of the situation in the 
West Indies so as to induce free Negroes to try 
their fortunes there. To this end meetings were 
held in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and 

tion to clear ourselves, but every day's delay lessens the time 
we may take for emancipation." 

Aa to the mode of emancipation, he was satisfied that that 
must be a matter of compromise between the passions, the 
prejudices, and the real difficulties which would each have its 
weight in that operation. He believed that the first chapter of 
this history, which was begun in St. Domingo, and the next 
succeeding ones, would recount how all the whites were driven 
from all the other islands. This, he thought, would prepare 
their minds for a peaceable accommodation between justice 
and policy; and furnish an answer to the difficult question, 
as to where the colored emigrants should go. He urged that 
the country put some plan under way, and the sooner it did 
so the greater would be the hope that it might be per- 
mitted to proceed peaceably toward consummation. — ^See Ford 
edition of Jefferson's Writings, VI, p. 349, VII, pp. 167, 168. 



70 A Century of Negro Migration 

Boston and even in some of the cities of the 
South, where these agents appealed to the free 
Negroes to emigrate.^* 

Thus before the American Colonization So- 
ciety had got well on its way toward accomplish- 
ing its purpose of deporting the Negroes to 
Africa the West Indies and British Guiana 
claimed the attention of free people of color in 
offering there unusual opportunities. After the 
consummation of British emancipation in those 
islands in 1838, the English nation came to be 
regarded by the Negroes of the United States 
as the exclusive friend of the race. The Negro 
press and church vied with each other in prais- 
ing British emancipation as an act of philan- 
thropy and pointed to the English dominions as 
an asylum for the oppressed. So disturbed 
were the whites by this growing feeling that 
riots broke out in northern cities on occasions of 
Negro celebrations of the anniversary of eman- 
cipation in the "West Indies. ^^ 

In view of these facts, thecolonizationists had 
to redouble their efforts to defend their cause. 
They found it a little difficult to make a good 
case for Liberia, a land far away in an un- 
healthy climate so much unlike that of the West 
Indies and British Guiana, where Negroes had 

i« Letter of Mr. Sianbury Boyce; and The African deposi- 
tory. 

^li Philadelphia Gazette, Aug. 2, 3, 4, 8, 1842; United States 
Gascttc, Aug. 2-5, 1842; and the Pennsylvanian, Aug. 2, 3, 4, 
8, 1842. 



Colonization a Remedy for Migration 71 

been declared citizens' entitled to all privileges 
afforded by the government. The colonization- 
ists could do no more than to express doubt that 
the Negroes would have there the opportunities 
for mental, moral and social betterment which 
were offered in Liberia. The promoters of the 
enterprise in Africa did not believe that the 
West Indian planters who had had emancipa- 
tion forced upon them would accept blacks from 
the United States as their equals, nor that they, 
far from receiving the consideration of freed^ 
men, would be there any more than menials. 
When told of the establishment of schools and 
churches for the improvemnt of the freedmen, 
the colonizationists replied that schools might 
be provided, but the planters could have no in- 
terest in encouraging education as they did not 
want an elevated class of people but bone and 
muscle. As an evidence of the truth of this 
statement it was asserted that newspapers of the 
country were filled with disastrous accounts of 
the falling off of crops and the scarcity of labor 
but had little to say about those forces instru- 
mental in the uplift of the people.^^ 

An effort was made also to show that there 
would be no economic advantage in going to the 
British dominions. It was thought that as soon 
as the first demand for labor was supplied 
wages would be reduced, for no new plantations 
could be opened there as in a growing country 

16 The African Bepository, XVI, pp. 113-115. 
6 



72 A Century of Negro Migration 

like Liberia. It would be impossible, therefore, 
for the Negroes immigrating there to take up 
laud and develop a class of small farmers as 
they were doing in Africa. Under such circum- 
stances, they contended, the Negroes in the West 
Indies could not feel any of the ''elevating in- 
fluences of nationality of character," as the 
white men would limit the influence of the Ne- 
groes by retaining practically all of the wealth 
of the islands. The inducements, therefore, of- 
fered the free Negroes in the United States were 
merely intended to use them in supplying in the 
British dominions the need of men to do drudg- 
ery scarcely more elevating than the toil of 
slaves.^'^ 

Determined to interest a larger number of 
persons in diverting the attention of the free 
Negroes from the West Indies, the colonization- 
ists took higher ground. They asserted that the 
interests of the millions of white men in this 
country were then at stake, and even if it would 
be better for the three million Negroes of the 
country gradually to emigrate to the British 
dominions, it would eventually prove prejudicial 
to the interests of the United States. They 
sliowed how the Negroes immigrating into the 
West Indies would be made to believe that the 
refusal to extend to them here social and political 
equalitywasci-uel oppression and the immigrants, 
therefore, would carry with them no good will 

" The African Hcpository, XXI, p. 114. 



\ 



Colonisation a Remedy for Migration 73 

to this country. When they arrived in the West 
Indies their circumstances would increase this 
hostility, alienate their affections and estrange 
them wholly from the United States. Taught 
to regard the British as the exclusive friends of 
their race, devoted to its elevation, they would 
become British in spirit. As such, these Ne- 
groes would be controlled by British influence 
and would increase the wealth and commerce of 
the British and as soldiers would greatly 
strengthen British power. ^^ 

It was better, therefore, they argued, to direct 
the Negroes to Liberia, for those who went there 
with a feeling of hostility against the white peo- 
ple were placed in circumstances operating to 
remove that feeling, in that the kind solicitude 
for their welfare would be extended them in 
their new home so as to overcome their preju- 
dices, win their confidence, and secure their at- 
tachment. Looking to this country as their 
fatherland and the home of their benefactors, 
the Liberians would develop a nation, taking the 
religion, customs and laws of this country as 
their models, marketing their produce in this 
country and purchasing our manufactures. In 
spite of its independence, therefore, Liberia 
would be American in feeling, language and in- 
terests, affording a means to get rid of a class 
undesirable here but desirable to us there in 

18 The African Bepository, XVI, p. 116. 



71 .1 Centunj of Negro Migration 

their power to extend American influence, trade 
and commerce.^^ 

Negroes migrated to the West Indies m spite 
of this warning and protest. Hayti, at first looked 
upon with fear of having a free Negro govern- 
ment near slaveholding States, became fixed in 
the minds of some as a desirable place for the 
colonization of free persons of color.^o t^- g ^^g 
due to the apparent natural advantages in soil, 
climate and the situation of the country over 
other places in consideration. It was thought 
that the island would support fourteen millions 
of people and that, once opened to immigration 
from the United States, it would in a few years 
fill up by natural increase. It was remembered 
that it was formerly the emporium of the West- 
ern AVorld and that it supplied both hemispheres 
with sugar and coffee. It had rapidly recovered 
from the disaster of the French Revolution and 
lacked only capital and education which the 
United States under these circumstances could 
furnish. Furthermore, it was argued that some- 
thing in this direction should be immediately 
done, as European nations then seeking to es^ 
tablish friendly relations with the islands, would 
secure there commercial advantages which the 
United States should have and could establish 
by sending to that island free Negroes especially 
devoted to agriculture. 

>" Thr African depository, XVI, p. 115. 
iojbid., XVI, p. 116. 



Colonization a Remedy for Migration 75 

In 1836, Z. Kingsley, a Florida planter,^! actu- 
ally undertook to carry out such a plan on a 

21 Speaking of this colony Kingsley said : * ' About eighteen 
months ago, I carried my son George Kingsley, a healthy 
colored man of uncorrupted morals, about thirty years of age, 
tolerably well educated, of very industrious habits, and a native 
of Florida, together with six prime African men, my own 
slaves, liberated for that express purpose, to the northeast side 
of the Island of Hayti, near Porte Plate, where we arrived in 
the month of October, 1836, and after application to the local 
authorities, from whom I rented some good land near the sea, 
and thickly timbered with lofty woods, I set them to work 
cutting down trees, about the middle of November, and returned 
to my home in Florida. My son wrote to us frequently, giving 
an account of his progress. Some of the fallen timber was 
dry enough to burn in January, 1837, when it was cleared up, 
and eight acres of corn planted, and as soon as circumstances 
would allow, sweet potatoes, yams, cassava, rice, beans, peas, 
plantains, oranges, and all sorts of fruit trees, were planted 
in succession. In the month of October, 1837, I again set off 
for Hayti, in a coppered brig of 150 tons, bought for the pur- 
pose and in five days and a half, from St. Mary's in Georgia, 
landed my son's wife and children, at Porte Plate, together 
with the wives and children of his servants, now working for 
him under an indenture of nine years; also two additional 
families of my slaves, all liberated for the express purpose of 
transportation to Hayti, where they were all to have as much 
good land in fee, as they could cultivate, say ten acres for each 
family, and all its proceeds, together with one-fourth part of 
the net proceeds of their labor, on my son's farm, for them- 
selves; also victuals, clothes, medical attendance, etc., gratis, 
besides Saturdays and Sundays, as days of labor for themselves, 
or of rest, just at their option. ' ' 

"On my arrival at my son's place, called Cabaret (twenty- 
seven miles east of Porte Plate) in November, 1837, as before 
stated, I found everything in the most flattering and prosperous 
condition. They had all enjoyed good health, were overflowing 
with the most delicious variety and abundance of fruits and 
provisions, and were overjoyed at again meeting their wives 



7G A Century of Negro Migration 

small scale. He established on the northeast 
side of Playti, near Port Plate, his son, George 

and children; whom they could introduce into good comfortable 
log houses, all nicely whitewashed, and in the midst of a pro- 
fuse abundance of good provisions, as they had generally cleared 
five or six acres of their land each, which being very rich, and 
planted with every variety to eat or to sell on their own ac- 
count, and had already laid up thitry or forty dollars apiece. 
My son's farm was upon a larger scale, and furnished with 
more commodious dwelUng houses, also with store and out 
houses. In nine months he had made and housed three crops 
of corn, of twenty-five bushels to the acre, each, or one crop 
every three months. His highland rice, which was equal to 
any in Carolina, so ripe and heavy as some of it to be couched 
or leaned down, and no bird had ever troubled it, nor had any 
of his fields ever been hoed, or required hoeing, there being as 
yet no appearance of grass. His cotton was of an excellent 
staple. In seven months it had attained the height of thirteen 
feet; the stalks were ten inches in circumference, and had up- 
wards of five hundred large boles on each stalk (not a worm 
nor red bug as yet to be seen). His yams, cassava, and sweet 
potatoes, were incredibly large, and plentifully thick in the 
ground; one kind of sweet potato, lately introduced from Ta- 
heita (formerly Otaheita) Island in the Pacific, was of peculiar 
excellence; tasted like new flour and grew to an ordinary size 
in one month. Those I ate at my son's place had been planted 
five weeks, and were as big as our full grovra Florida potatoes. 
His sweet orange trees budded upon wild stalks cut off (which 
every where abound), about six months before had large tops, 
and the buds were swelling as if preparing to flower. My son 
reported that his people had all enjoyed good health and had 
labored just as steadily as they formerly did in Florida and 
were well satisfied with their situation and the advantageous 
exchange of circumstances they had made. They all enjoyed 
the friendship of the neighboring inhabitants and the entire 
confidence of the Haytian Government." 

' ' T remained with my son all January, 1838 and assisted him 
in making improvements of different kinds, amongst which was 
a now two-story house, and then left him to go to Port au 



Colonization a Remedy for Migration 77 

Kingsley, a well-educated colored man of indus- 
trious habits and uncorrupted morals, together 
with six ''prime African men," slaves liberated 
for that express purpose. There he purchased 
for them 35,000 acres of land upon which they 
engaged in the production of crops indigenous 
to that soil. 

Hayti, however, was not to be the only island 
to get consideration. In 1834 two hundred col- 
ored emigrants went from New York alone to 
Trinidad, under the superintendence and at the 
expense of planters of that island. It was later 
reported that every one of them found employ- 
ment on the day of arrival and in one or two in- 
stances the most intelligent were placed as over- 
seers at the salary of $500 per annum. No one 
received less than $1.00 a day and most of them 
earned $1.50. The Trinidad press welcomed 
these immigrants and spoke in the highest terms 
of the valuable services they rendered the coun- 
^j.y 22 others followed from year to year. One 
of these Negroes appreciated so much this new 
field of opportunity that he returned and in- 

Prince, where I obtained a favorable answer from the President 
of Hayti, to his petition, asking for leave to hold in fee simple, 
the same tract of land upon which he then lived as a tenant, 
paying rent to the Haytian Government, containing about 
thirty-five thousand acres, which was ordered to be surveyed to 
him, and valued, and not expected to exceed the sum of three 
thousand dollars, or about ten cents an acre. After obtaining 
this land in fee for my son, I returned to Florida in February, 
in 1838."— See The African Eepository, XIV, pp. 215-216. 
22mies Begister, LXVI, pp. 165, 386. 



78 A Century of Negro Migration 

duced twenty intelligent free persons of color 
living in Annapolis, Maryland, also to emigrate 
to Trinidad.-^ 

The Neiv York Sun reported in 1840 that 160 
colored persons left Philadelphia for Trinidad. 
They had been hired by an eminent planter to 
labor on that island and they were encouraged 
to expect that they should have privileges which 
would make their residence desirable. The ed- 
itor wished a few dozen Trinidad planters 
would come to that city on the same business 
and on a much larger scale.^^ N. W. Pollard, 
agent of the Government of Trinidad, came to 
Baltimore in 1851 to make his appeal for emi- 
grants, offering to pay all expenses.^^ At a 
meeting held in Baltimore, in 1852, the parents 
of Mr. Stanbury Boyce, now a retired merchant 
in "Washington, District of Columbia, were also 
induced to go. They found there opportunities 
which they had never had before and well estab- 
lished themselves in their new home. The ac- 
count which Mr. Boyce gives in a letter to the 
writer corroborates the newspaper reports as to 
the success of the enterprise.-*^ 

TJie Neiv York Journal of Commerce reported 
in 1841 that, according to advices received at 
New Orleans from Jamaica, there had arrived 
in that island fourteen Negro emigrants from 

23 Niles Register, LXVII, p. 180. 

2< The African Bepository, XVIj p. 28. 

25 Ibid., p. 29. 

-^Letter of Mr. Stanbury Boyce. 



Colonisation a Remedy for Migration 79 

tlie United States, being the first fruits of Mr. 
Barclay's mission to this country. A much 
larger number of Negroes were expected and 
various applications for their services had been 
received from respectable parties.^^ The prod- 
ucts of soil were reported as much reduced from 
former years and to meet its demand for labor 
some freedmen from Sierra Leone were induced 
to emigrate to that island in 1842.-^ One Mr. 
Anderson, an agent of the government of Ja- 
maica, contemplated visiting New York in 1851 
to secure a number of laborers, tradesmen and 
agricultural settlers. ^^ 

In the course of time, emigration to foreign 
lands interested a larger number of representa- 
tive Negroes. At a national council called in 
1853 to promote more effectively the ameliora- 
tion of the colored people, the question of emi- 
gration and that only was taken up for serious 
consideration. But those who desired to intro- 
duce the question of Liberian colonization or 
who were especially interested in that scheme 
were not invited. Among the persons who pro- 
moted the calling of this council were William 
Webb, Martin E. Delaney, J. Gould Bias, Frank- 
lin Turner, Augustus Greene, James M. Whit- 
field, William Lambert, Henry Bibb, James T. 
Holly and Henry M. Collins. 

27 St. Lucia and Trinidad were then considered unfavorable 
to the working of the new system. — See The African Beposi- 
tory, XXVII, p. 196. 

28 Niles Register, LXIII, p. 65. 

29 lUd., LXIII, p. 65. 



80 A Century of Negro Migration 

There developed in this assembly three 
groups, one believing with Martin R. Delaney 
that it was best to go to the Niger Valley in 
Africa, another following the counsel of James 
M. Whitfield then interested in emigration to 
Central America, and a third supporting James 
T. Holly who insisted that Hayti offered the 
best opportunities for free persons of color de- 
siring to leave the United States. Delaney was 
commissioned to proceed to Africa, where he 
succeeded in concluding treaties with eight Af- 
rican kings who offered American Negroes in- 
ducements to settle in their respective countries. 
James Eedpath, already interested in the 
scheme of colonization in Hayti, had preceded 
Holly there and with the latter as his coworker 
succeeded in sending to that country as many as 
two thousand emigrants, the first of whom 
sailed from this country in 1861.^" Owing to 
the lack of equipment adequate to the estab- 
lishment of the settlement and the unfavorable 
climate, not more than one third of the emigrants 
remained. Some attention was directed to Cali- 
fornia and Central America just as in the case 
of Africa but nothing in that direction took tan- 
gible form immediately, and the Civil "War fol- 
lowing soon thereafter did not give some of 
these schemes a chance to materialize. 

»o Cromwell, The Negro in American History, pp. 43-44. ^^ 



k 



CHAPTER V 

THE SUCCESSFUL MIGRANT 

THE reader will naturally be interested in 
learning exactly what these thousands of 
Negroes did on free soil. To estimate these 
achievements the casual reader of contemporary 
testimony would now, as such persons did then, 
find it decidedly easy. He would say that in 
spite of the unfailing aid which philanthropists 
gave the blacks, they seldom kept themselves 
above want and, therefore, became a public 
charge, afflicting their communities with so much 
poverty, disease and crime that they were con- 
sidered the lepers of society. The student of 
history, however, must look beyond these com- 
ments for the whole truth. One must take into 
consideration the fact that in most cases these 
Negroes escaped as fugitives without sufficient 
food and clothing to comfort them until they 
could reach free soil, lacking the small fund with 
which the pioneer usually provided himself in 
going to establish a home in the wilderness, and 
lacking, above all, initiative of which slavery had 
deprived them. Furthermore, these refugees 
with few exceptions had to go to places where 
they were not wanted and in some cases to 
points from which they were driven as unde- 

81 



82 A Century of Negro Migration 

sirables, altbougli preparation for their coming 
had sometimes gone to the extent of purchasing 
liomes and making provision for employment 
upon arrival.^ Several well-established Negro 
settlements in the North, moreover, were broken 
up by the slave hunters after the passing of the 
Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.2 

The increasing intensity of the hatred of the 
Negroes must be understood too both as a cause 
and result of their intolerable condition. Prior 
to 1800 the Negroes of the North were in fair 
circumstances. Until that time it was generally 
believed that the whites and the blacks would 
soon reach the advanced stage of living together 
on a basis of absolute equality.^ The Negroes 
had not at that time exceeded the number that 
could be assimilated by the sympathizing com- 
munities in that section. The intolerable legis- 
lation of the South, however, forced so many 
free Negroes in the rough to crowd northern 
cities during the first four decades of the nine- 
teenth century that they could not be easily re- 
adjusted. The number seeking employment far 
exceeded the demand for labor and thus multi- 
plied the number of vagrants and paupers, many 
of whom had already been forced to this condi- 
tion by the Irish and Germans then immigrating 
into northern cities. At one time, as in the case 

» Cincinnati Morning Herald, July 17, 1846. 
= Woodson, The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861, p. 242. 
3 Turner, The Negro in Pennsylvania^ p. 143; Correspondence 
of Dr. Benjamin Eiish, XXXIX, p. 41, 



The Successful Migrant 83 

of Philadelphia, the Negroes- constituting a 
small fraction of the population furnished one 
half of the criminals.^ A radical opposition to 
the Negro followed, therefore, arousing first the 
laboring classes and finally alienating the sup- 
port of the well-to-do people and the press. 
This condition obtained until 1840 in most 
northern communities and until 1850 in some 
places where the Negro population was consid- 
erable. 

We must also take into account the critical 
labor situation during these years. The north- 
ern people were divided as to the way the Ne- 
groes should be encouraged. The mechanics of 
the North raised no objection to having the Ne- 
groes freed and enlightened but did not welcome 
them to that section as competitors in the strug- 
gle of life. When, therefore, the blacks, con- 
verted to the doctrine of training the hand to 
work with skill, began to appear in northern 
industrial centers there arose a formidable prej- 
udice against them.^ Negro and white me- 
chanics had once worked together but during 
the second quarter of the nineteenth century, 
when labor became more dignified and a larger 
number of white persons devoted themselves to 
skilled labor, they adopted the policy of elim- 
inating the blacks. This opposition, to be sure, 

4DuBois, Tlie PhiladelpMa Negro, pp. 26-27. 
5 The Journal of Negro History, I, p. 5 ; and Proceedings of 
the American Convention of Abolition Societies. 



84 A Century of Negro Migrat'J 

was not a mere harmless sentiment. It tended 
to give rise to the organization of labor groups 
and finally to that of trades unions, the begin- 
nings of those controlling this country to-day. 
Carrying the fight against the Negro still 
further, these laboring classes used their influ- 
ence to obtain legislation against the employ- 
ment of Negroes in certain pursuits. Maryland 
and Georgia passed laws restricting the priv- 
ileges of Negro mechanics, and Pennsylvania 
followed their example.^ 

Even in those cases when the Negroes were 
not disturbed in their new homes on free soil, it 
was, with the exception of the Quaker and a few 
other communities, merely an act of toleration."^ 
It must not be concluded, however, that the Ne- 
groes then migrating to the North did not re- 
ceive considerable aid. The fact to be noted 
here is that because they were not well received 
sometimes by the people of their new environ- 
ment, the help which they obtained from friends 
afar off did not suffice to make up for the defi- 
ciency of community cooperation. This, of 
course, was an unusual handicap to the Negro, 
as his life as a slave tended to make him a de- 
pendent rather than a pioneer. 

It is evident, however, from accessible sta- 
tistics that wherever the Negro was adequately 
encouraged he succeeded. When the urban Ne- 

« DuBois and Dill, The Negro American Artisan, p. AQ. 
' Jay, An Inquiry, pp. 34, 108, 109, 114. 



The Successful Migrant 85 

groes in northern communities had emerged 
from their crude state they easily learned from 
the white men their method of solving the prob- 
lems of life. This tendency was apparent after 
1840 and striking results of their efforts were 
noted long before the Civil War. They showed 
an inclination to work when positions could be 
found, purchased homes, acquired other prop- 
erty, built churches and established schools. 
Going even further than this, some of them, tak- 
ing advantage of their opportunities in the busi- 
ness world, accumulated considerable fortunes, 
just as had been done in certain centers in the 
South where Negroes had been given a chance.^ 
In cities far north like Boston not so much dif- 
ference as to the result of this migration was 
noted. Some economic progress among the Ne- 
groes had early been observed there as a result 
of the long residence of Negroes in that city as 
in the case of Lewis Hayden who established a 
successful clothing business.^ In New York 
such evidences were more apparent. There 
were in that city not so many Negroes as fre- 
quented some other northern communities of 
this time but enough to make for that city a de- 
cidedly perplexing problem. It was the usual 
situation of ignorant, helpless fugitives and free 
Negroes going, they knew not where, to find a 
better country. The situation at times became 

8 TJie Journal of Negro History, I, pp. 20-22. 

9 Delany, Condition of the Colored People, p. 106. 



86 .1 Century of Negro Migration 

so grave that it uot onlj^ caused prejudice but 
gave rise to intense opposition against those 
who defended the cause of the blacks as in the 
case of the abolition riots which occurred at sev- 
eral places in the State in 1834.^*^ 

To relieve this situation, Grerrit Smith, an un- 
usually philanthropic gentleman, came forward 
with an interesting plan. Having large tracts 
of land in the southeastern counties of New 
York, he proposed to settle on small farms a 
large number of those Negroes huddled to- 
gether in the congested districts of New York 
City. Desiring to obtain only the best class, he 
requested that the Negroes to be thus colonized 
be recommended by Reverend Charles B. Ray, 
Reverend Theodore S. Wright and Dr. J. Mc- 
Cune Smith, three Negroes of New York City, 
known to be representative of the best of the 
race. Upon their recommendations he deeded 
unconditionally to black men in 1846 three hun- 
dred small farms in Franklin, Essex, Hamilton, 
Fulton, Oneida, Delaware, Madison and Ulster 
counties, giving to each settler beside $10.00 to 
enable him to visit his farm.^^ With these hold- 
ings the blacks would not only have a basis for 
economic independence but would have suf- 
ficient property to meet the special qualifica- 
tions which New York by the law of 1823 re- 
quired of Negroes offering to vote. 

JO The Liberator, July 9, 1835. 
"Hammond, Gerrit Smith, pp. 26-27. 



The Successful Migrant 87 

This experiment, however, was a failure. It 
was not successful because of the intractability 
of the land, the harshness of the climate, and, in 
a great measure, the inefficiency of the settlers. 
They had none of the qualities of farmers. 
Furthermore, having been disabled by infirmities 
and vices they could not as beneficiaries answer 
the call of the benefactor. Peterboro, the town 
opened to Negroes in this section, did maintain 
a school and served as a station of the Under- 
ground Railroad but the agricultural results 
expected of the entei-prise never materialized. 
The main difficulty in this case was the impos- 
sibility of substituting something foreign for 
individual enterprise. ^^ 

Progressive Negroes did appear, however, in 
other parts of the State. In Penyan, Western 
New York, William Piatt and Joseph C. Cassey 
were successful lumber merchants. ^^ Mr. W. H. 
Topp of Albany was for several years one of 
the leading merchant tailors of that city.^^ 
Henry Scott, of New York City, developed a 
successful pickling business, supplying most of 
the vessels entering that port.^^ Thomas Down- 
ing for thirty years ran a creditable restaurant 
in the midst of the Wall Street banks, where he 
made a fortune.^'' Edward V. Clark conducted 

12 FrotMngham, Gerrit Smith; p. 73. 

13 Delany, Condition of the Colored People, pp. 107-108, 
■i-ilbid., p. 102. 

1-5 Ibid., p. 102. 

1^6 Ibid., pp. 103-104. 

7 



88 A Century of Negro Migration 

a thriving business, handling jewelry and sil- 
verware.^' The Negroes as a whole, moreover, 
had shown progress. Aided by the Government 
and philanthropic white people, they had before 
the Civil AVar a school system with primary, in- 
termediate and grammar schools and a normal 
department. They then had considerable prop- 
erty, several churches and some benevolent in- 
stitutions. 

In Southern Pennsylvania, nearer to the 
border between the slave and free States, the 
effects of the achievements of these Negroes 
were more apparent for the reason that in these 
urban centers there were sufficient Negroes for 
one to be helpful to the other. Philadelphia pre- 
sented then the most striking example of the re- 
making of these people. Here the handicap of 
the foreign element was greatest, especially after 
1830. The Philadelphia Negro, moreover, was 
further impeded in his progress by the pres- 
ence of southerners who made Philadelphia 
their home, and still more by the prejudice of 
those Philadelphia merchants who, sustaining 
such close relations to the South, hated the 
Negro and the abolitionists who antagonized 
their customers. 

Tn spite of these untoward circumstances, 
however, the Negroes of Philadelphia achieved 
success. Negroes who had formerly been able 
to toil upward were still restricted but they had 

i^Delany, Condition of tJie Colored People, pp. 106-107. 



The Successful Migrant 89 

learned to make opportunities. In 1832 the 
Philadelphia blacks had $350,000 of taxable 
property, $359,626 in 1837 and $400,000 in 1847. 
These Negroes had 16 churches and 100 benevo- 
lent societies in 1837 and 19 churches and 106 
benevolent societies in 1847. Philadelphia then 
had more successful Negro schools than any 
other city in the country. There were also about 
500 Negro mechanics in spite of the opposition 
of organized labor.^^ Some of these Negroes, 
of course, were natives of that city. 

Chief among those who had accumulated con- 
siderable property was Mr. James Forten, the 
proprietor of one of the leading sail manufac- 
tories, constantly employing a large number of 
men, black and white. Joseph Casey, a broker 
of considerable acumen, also accumulated desir- 
able property, worth probably $75,000.^** Crowd- 
ed out of the higher pursuits of labor, certain 
other enterprising business men of this group 
organized the Guild of Caterers. This was com- 
posed of such men as Bogle, Prosser, Dorsey, 
Jones and Minton, The aim was to elevate the 
Negro waiter and cook from the plane of me- 
nials to that of progressive business men. Then 
came Stephen Smith who amassed a large for- 
tune as a lumber merchant and with him Whip- 
per, Vidal and Purnell. Still and Bowers were 

18 DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro, p. 31 ; Beport of the 
Condition of the Free People of Color, 1838; ibid., 1849; and 
Bacon, Statistics of the Colored People of Philadelphia, 1859. 

19 Delany, Condition of the Colored People, p. 95. 



yO A Century of Negro Migration 

reliable coal merchants, Adger a success in 
handling furniture, Bowser a well-known painter, 
and AVilliam H. Riley the intelligent boot- 
maker.-*^ 

There were a few such successful Negroes in 
other communities in the State. Mr. William 
Goodrich, of York, acquired considerable inter- 
est in the branch of the Baltimore and Ohio 
Railroad extending to Lancaster.^i Benjamin 
Richards, of Pittsburgh, amassed a large for- 
tune running a butchering business, buying by 
contract droves of cattle to supply the various 
military posts of the United States.^^ j^^, 
Henry M. Collins, who started life as a boatman, 
left this position for speculation in real estate 
in Pittsburgh where he established himself as 
an asset of the community and accumulated con- 
siderable wealth."^ Owen A. Barrett, of the 
same city, made his way by discovering the rem- 
edy known as B. A. Fahnestock's Celebrated 
Vermifuge, for which he was retained in the em- 
ploy of the proprietor, who exploited the rem- 
edy.-'* Mr. John Julius made himself indis- 
pensable to Pittsburgh by running the Concert 
Hall Cafe where he served President "William 
Henry Harrison in 1840.^^ 

2" DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro, pp. 31-36. 

21 Delany, Condition of the Colored People, p. 109. 

22 Ihid., p. 101. 

23 Ibid., p. 104. 
2* rbid., p. 105. 
25 7buZ., p. 107. 



The Successful Migrant 91 

The field of greatest acliievement, however, 
was not in the conservative East where the peo- 
ple had well established their going toward an 
enlightened and sympathetic aristocracy of 
talent and wealth. It was in the West where 
men were in position to establish themselves 
anew and make of life what they would. These 
crude communities, to be sure, often objected to 
the presence of the Negroes and sometimes 
drove them out. But, on the other hand, not a 
few of those centers in the maldng were in the 
hands of the Quakers and other philanthropic 
persons who gave the Negroes a chance to grow 
up with the community, when they exhibited a 
capacity which justified philanthropic efforts in 
their behalf. 

These favorable conditions obtained espe- 
cially in the towns along the Ohio river, where 
so many fugitives and free persons of color 
stopped on their way from slavery to freedom. 
In Steubenville a number of Negroes had by 
their industry and good deportment made them- 
selves helpful to the community. Stephen Mul- 
ber who had been in that town for thirty years 
was in 1835 the leader of a group of thrifty 
free persons of color. He had a brick dwelling, 
in which he lived, and other property in the 
city. He made his living as a master mechanic 
employing a force of workmen to meet the in- 
creasing demand for his labor.^^ In Gallipolis, 

26T7ie Journal of Negro History, 1, p. 22. 



92 A Century of Negro Migration 

there was another group of this class of Ne- 
groes, who had permanently attached them- 
selves to the town by the acquisition of prop- 
erty. They were then able not only to provide 
for their families but were maintaining also a 
school and a church.^^ In Portsmouth, Ohio, 
despite the "Black Friday" upheaval of 1831, 
the Negroes settled down to the solution of the 
problems of their new environment and later 
showed in the accumulation of property evi- 
dences of actual progress. Among the success- 
ful Negroes in Columbus was David Jenkins f 
who acquired considerable property as a 
painter, glazier and paper hanger.^^ One Mr. 
Hill, of Chillicothe, was for several years its 
leading tanner and currier.^^ 

It was in Cincinnati, however, that the Ne- 
groes made most progress in the West. The 
migratory blacks came there at times in such 
large numbers, as we have observed, that they 
provoked the hostile classes of whites to employ 
rash measures to exterminate them. But the 
Negroes, accustomed to adversity, struggled on, 
endeavoring through schools and churches to 
embrace every opportunity to rise. By 1840 
there were 2,255 Negroes in that city. They 
had, exclusive of personal effects and $19,000 
worth of church property, accumulated $209,000 

2T ]Iiekok, The Negro in Ohio, p. 88. 

2« Dclauy, Condition of the Colored People, p. 99. 

2^ Ibid., p. 10]. 



i 



The Successful Migrant 93 

worth of real estate. A number of their pro- 
gressive men had established a real estate firm 
known as the "Iron Chest" company which built 
houses for Negroes. One man, who had once 
thought it unwise to accumulate wealth from 
which he might be driven, had, by 1840, changed 
his mind and purchased $6,000 worth of real 
estate. 

Another Negro paid $5,000 for himself and 
family and bought a home worth $800 or $1,000. 
A freedman, who was a slave until he was 
twenty-four years of age, then had two lots 
worth $10,000, paid a tax of $40 and had 320 
acres of land in Mercer County. Another, who 
was worth only $3,000 in 1836, had seven houses 
in 1840, 400 acres of land in Indiana, and an- 
other tract in Mercer County, Ohio. He was 
worth altogether about $12,000 or $15,000. A 
woman who was a slave until she was thirty was 
then worth $2,000. She had also come into po- 
tential possession of two houses on which a 
white lawyer had given her a mortgage to se- 
cure the pajTuent of $2,000 borrowed from this 
thrifty woman. Another Negro, who was on 
the auction block in 1832, had spent $2,600 pur- 
chasing himself and family and had bought two 
brick houses worth $6,000 and 560 acres of land 
in Mercer County, Ohio, said to be worth 
$2,500.30 

30 The FUlanthropist, July 21, 1840, gives these statistics in 
detail. 



94 A Century of Negro Migration 

The Negroes of Cincinnati liad as early as 
1820 established schools which developed dur- 
ing the forties into something like a modern 
system with Gilmore's High School as a cap- 
stone. By that time they had also not only 
several churches but had given time and means 
to the organization and promotion of such as the 
Sabbath School Youth's Society, the Total Ab- 
stinence Temperance Society and the Anti-Slav- 
ery Society. The worthy example set by the 
Negroes of this city was a stimulus to noble en- 
deavor and significant achievements of Negroes 
throughout the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys. 
Disarming their enemies of the weapon that 
they would continue a public charge, they se- 
cured the cooperation of a larger number of 
white people who at first had treated them with 
contempt.^^ 

This unusual progress in the Ohio valley had 
been promoted by two forces, the development 
of the steamboat as a factor in transportation 
and the rise of the Negro mechanic. Negroes 
employed on vessels as servants to the travel- 
ling public amassed large sums received in the 
form of tips. Furthermore, the fortunate few, 
constituting the stewards of these vessels, could 
by placing contracts for supplies and using 
business methods realize handsome incomes, 
^fany Negroes thus enriched purchased real es- 
tate and went into business in towns along the 
Ohio. 

8» The Philanthropist, July 21, 1840. 



The Successful Migrant 95 

The other forcej the rise of the Negro me- 
chanic, was made possible by overcoming much 
of the prejudice which had at first been encoun- 
tered. A great change in this respect had taken 
place in Cincinnati by 1840.=^2 Many Negroes 
who had been forced to work as menial laborers 
then had the opportunity to show their useful- 
ness to their families and to the community. 
Negro mechanics were then getting as much 
skilled labor as they could do. It was not un- 
common for white artisans to solicit employment 
of colored men because they had the reputation 
of being better paymasters than master work- 
men of the favored race. Wliite mechanics not 
only worked with the blacks but often asso- 
ciated with them, patronized the same barber 
shop, and went to the same places of amuse- 
ment.^^ 

Out of this group came some very useful Ne- 
groes, among whom may be mentioned Robert 
Harlan, the horseman; A. V. Thompson, the 
tailor; J. Presley and Thomas Ball, contractors, 
and Samuel T. Wilcox, the merchant, who was 
worth $60,000 in 1859.3^ There were among 
them two other successful Negroes, Henry Boyd 
and Robert Gordon. Boyd was a Kentucky 
freedman who helped to overcome the prejudice 
in Cincinnati against Negro mechanics by in- 
venting and exploiting a corded bed, the demand 

32 The Cincinnati Daily Gazette, Sept. 14, 1841. 

33 Barber's Eeport on Colored People vn Ohio. 

34 Delany, Condition of the Colored People, pp. 97, 98. 



96 A Century of Negro Migration 

for which was extensive throughout the Ohio 
and Mississippi valleys. He had a creditable 
manufacturing business in which he employed 
twenty-five men.^^ 

Robert Gordon was a much more interesting 
man. He was born a slave in Richmond, Vir- 
ginia. He ingratiated himself into the favor of 
his master who placed him in charge of a large 
coal yard with the privilege of selling the slake 
for his own benefit. In the course of time, he 
accumulated in this position thousands of dol- 
lars with which he finally purchased himself 
and moved away to free soil. After observing 
the situation in several of the northern centers, 
he finally decided to settle in Cincinnati, where 
he arrived with $15,000. Knowing the coal busi- 
ness, he well established himself there after 
some discouragement and opposition. He ac- 
cumulated much wealth which he invested in 
United States bonds during the Civil War and 
in real estate on Walnut Hills when the bonds 
were later redeemed. ^^ 

The ultimately favorable attitude of the peo- 
ple of Detroit toward immigrating Negroes had 
been reflected by the position the people of that 
section had taken from the time of the earliest 
settlements. Generally speaking, Detroit ad^ 
herod to this position.^^ In this congenial com- 

35 Delany, Condition of the Colored People, p. 98. 
30 These facts were obtained from his children and from 
Cincinnati city directories. 

'T Niles Jiegistcr, LXIX, p. 357. 



The Successful Migrant 97 

munity prospered many a Negro family. There 
were the Williams' most of whom confined them- 
selves to their trade of bricklaying and amassed 
considerable wealth. Then there were the 
Cooks, descending from Lomax B. Cook, a 
broker of no little business ability. Will Marion 
Cook, the musician, belongs to this family. The 
De Baptistes, too, were among the first to suc- 
ceed in this new home, as they prospered ma- 
terially from their experience and knowledge 
previously acquired in Fredericksburg, Vir- 
ginia, as contractors. From this group came 
Richard De Baptiste, who in his day was the 
most useful Negro Baptist preacher in the 
Northwest.^^ The Pelhams were no less suc- 
cessful in establishing themselves in the eco- 
nomic world. Having an excellent reputation 
in the community, they easily secured the co- 
operation of the influential white people in the 
city. Out of this family came Robert A. Pel- 
ham, for years editor of a weekly in Detroit, 
and from 1901 to the present time an employee 
of the Federal Government in Washington. 

The children of the Richards, another old 
family, were in no sense inferior to the descend^ 
ants of the others. The most prominent and 
the most useful to emerge from this group was 
the daughter, Fannie M. Richards. She was 
born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, October 1, 
1841. Having left that State with her parents 

38 Letters received from Miss Pannie M. Richards of Detroit, 



98 A Century of Negro Migration 

when she was quite young, she did not see so 
much of the antebellum conditions obtaining 
there. Desiring to have better training than 
what was then given to persons of color in De- 
troit, she went to Toronto where she studied 
English, history, drawing and needlework. In 
later years she attended the Teachers ' Training 
School in Detroit. She became a public-school 
teacher there in 1863 and after fifty years of 
creditable service in this work she was retired 
on a pension in 1913.^^ 

The Negroes in the North had not only shown 
their ability to rise in the economic world when 
properly encouraged but had begun to exhibit 
power of all kinds. There were Negro inventors, 
a few lawyers, a number of physicians and 
dentists, many teachers, a score of intelligent 
preachers, some scholars of note, and even suc- 
cessful blacks in the finer arts. Some of these, 
with Frederick Douglass as the most influential, 
were also doing creditable work in journalism 
with about thirty newspapers which had devel- 
oped among the Negroes as weapons of de- 
fense.^"^ 

This progress of the Negroes in the North was 
much more marked after the middle of the nine- 
teenth century. The migration of Negroes to 
northern communities was at first checked by 

80 These facts were obtained from clippings taken from De- 
troit newspapers and from letters bearing on Miss Kichard's 
career. 

*o The A. M. E. Church -Review, IV, p. 309; and XX, p. 137. 



The Successful Migrant 99 

the reaction in those places during the thirties 
and forties. Thus relieved of the large influx 
which once constituted a menace, those commu- 
nities gave the Negroes already on hand better 
economic opportunities. It was fortunate too 
that prior to the check in the infiltration of the 
blacks they had come into certain districts in 
sufficiently large numbers to become a more po- 
tential factor.'*^ They were strong enough in 
some cases to make common cause against foes 
and could by cooperation solve many problems 
with which the blacks in dispersed condition 
could not think of grappling. 

Their endeavors along these lines proceeded 
in many cases from well-organized etforts like 
those culminating in the numerous national con- 
ventions which began meeting first in Phila- 
delphia in 1830 and after some years of de- 
liberation in this city extended to others in 
the North.^2 These bodies aimed not only to 
promote education, religion an.d morals, but, 
taking up the work which the Quakers began, 
they put forth efforts to secure to the free 
blacks opportunities to be trained in the me- 
chanic arts to equip themselves for participa- 
tion in the industries then springing up through- 
out the North. This movement, however, did 
not succeed in the proportion to the efforts put 

41 Censuses of the United States; and Clark, Present Condi- 
tion of Colored People. 

42 Minutes and Proceedings of the Annual Convention of tie 
People of Color, 



100 A Century of Negro Migration 

forth because of the increasing power of the 
trades unions. 

After the middle of the nineteenth century too 
the Negroes found conditions a little more favor- 
able to their progress than the generation be- 
fore. The aggressive South had by that time so 
shaped the policy of the nation as not only to 
force the free States to cease aiding the escape 
of fugitives but to undertake to impress the 
northerner into the service of assisting in their 
recapture as provided in the Fugitive Slave 
Law. This repressive measure set a larger num- 
ber of the people thinking of the Negro as a 
national problem rather than a local one. The 
attitude of the North was then reflected in the 
personal liberty laws as an answer to this meas- 
ure and in the increasing sympathy for the Ne- 
groes. During this decade, therefore, more was 
done in the North to secure to the Negroes bet- 
ter treatment and to give them opportunities 
for improvement. 



CHAPTER VI 

CONFUSING MOVEMENTS 

THE Civil War waged largely in tlie South 
started the most exciting movement of the 
Negroes hitherto known. The invading Union 
forces drove the masters before them, leaving 
the slaves and sometimes poor whites to escape 
where they would or to remain in helpless con- 
dition to constitute a problem for the northern 
army.^ Many poor whites of the border States 
went with the Confederacy, not always because 
they wanted to enter the war, but to choose what 
they considered the lesser of two evils. The 
slaves soon realized a community of interests 
with the Union forces sent, as they thought, to 
deliver them from thralldom. At first, it was 
difficult to determine a fixed policy for dealing 
with these fugitives. To drive them away was 
an easy matter, but this did not solve the prob- 
lem. General Butler's action at Fortress Mon- 
roe in 1861, however, anticipated the policy 
finally adopted by the Union forces.^ Hearing 
that three fugitive slaves who were received into 

1 This is well treated in John Eaton 's Grant, Lincoln and the 
Freedmen. See also Coffin's Boys of '61. 

2 Williams, History of the Negro Troops in the War of the 
'Rebellion, p. 70. 

101 



102 A Century of Negro Migration 

his lines were to have been employed in building 
fortifications for the Confederate army, he de- 
clared them seized as contraband of war rather 
than declare them actually free as did General 
Fremont^^ and General Hunter.^ He then gave 
them employment for wages and rations and 
appropriated to the support of the unemployed 
a portion of the earnings of the laborers^^^Thij. 
policy was followed by General Wood^-^utler's 
successor, and by General Banks in New Or- 
leans. 

An elaborate plan for handling such fugitives 
was carried out by E. S. Pierce and General 
Kufus Saxton at Port Royal, South Carolina. 
Seeing the situation in another light, however, 
General Halleck in charge in the West excluded 
slaves from the Union lines, at first, as did Gen- 
eral Dix in Virginia. But Halleck, in his in- 
structions to General McCullum, February, 
1862, ordered him to put contrabands to work 
to pay for food and clothing.^ Other com- 
manders, like General McCook and General 
Johnson, permitted the slave hunltrs to enter 
their lines and take their slaves upon identifica- 
tion," ignoring the confiscation act of August, 
1861, which was construed by some as justifying 
the retention of such refugees. Officers of a 
different attitude, however, soon began to pro- 

8 Grecly, American Co7iflict, I, p. 585. 

* Ibid., II, p. 246. 

» Official Hecords of the HeheUion, VIII, p. 628. 

'Williams, Negro Troops, p. 66 et seq. 



Confusing Movements 103 

test against the returning of fugitive slaves. 
General Grant, also, while admitting the binding 
force of General Halleck's order, refused to 
grant permits to those in search of fugitives 
seeking asylum within his lines and at the cap- 
ture of Fort Donelson ordered the retention of 
all blacks who had been used by the Confederates 
in building fortifications/ 

Lincoln finally urged the necessity for with- 
holding fugitive slaves from the enemy, believ- 
ing that there could be in it no danger of servile 
insurrection and that the Confederacy would 
thereby be weakened.^ As this opinion soon de- 
veloped into a conviction that official action was 
necessary. Congress, by Act of March 13, 1862, 
provided that slaves be protected against the 
claims of their pursuers. Continuing further in 
this direction, the Federal Government grad- 
ually reached the position of withdrawing Negro 
labor from the Confederate territory. Finally 
the United States Government adopted the pol- 
icy of withholding from the Confederates, slaves 
received with the understanding that their mas- 
ters were in rebellion against the United States. 
"With this as a settled policy then, the United 
States Government had to work out some 
scheme for the remaking of these fugitives com- 
ing into its camps. 

In some of these cases the fugitives found 

1 Official Becords of the Eebellion, VIII, p. 370; Williams, 
Negro Troops, p. 75. 

8 Eaton, Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen, pp. 87, 92. 

8 



104 A Century of Negro Migration 

themselves among men more hostile to them 
than their masters were, for many of the Union 
soldiers of the border States were slaveholders 
themselves and northern soldiers did not under- 
stand that they were fighting to free Negroes. 
The condition in which they were on arriving, 
moreover, was a new problem for the army. 
Some came naked, some in decrepitude, some 
afflicted with disease, and some wounded in their 
efforts to escape.^ There were ' ' women in trav- 
ail, the helplessness of childliood and of old 
age, the horrors of sickness and of frequent 
deaths. ' '^° In their crude state few of them had 
any conception of the significance of liberty, 
thinking that it meant idleness and freedom 
from restraint. In consequence of this igno- 
rance there developed such undesirable habits 
as deceit, theft and licentiousness to aggravate 
the afflictions of nakedness, famine and dis- 
ease.^^ 

In the East large numbers of these refugees 
were concentrated at Washington, Alexandria, 
Fortress Monroe, Hampton, Craney Island and 
Fort Norfolk. There were smaller groups of 
them at Yorktown, Suffolk and Portsmouth.^ ^ 

"Pierce, Freedmen of Port Boyal, South Carolina, passim; 
Botume, First Days Among the Contrabands, pp. 10-22; and 
Pearson, Letters from Port Royal, passim, 

10 Eaton, Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen, p. 92. 

11 Ibid., pp. 2, 3. 

12 Rei)ort of the Committee of Eepresentatives of the New 
York Yearly Meeting of Friends upon the Condition and Wants 
of the Colored Refugees, 1862, p. 1 et seq. 



Confusing Movements 105 

Some of tliem were conducted from these camps 
into York, Columbia, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh 
and Philadelphia, and by water to New York 
and Boston, from which they went to various 
parts seeking labor. Some collected in groups 
as in the case of those at Five Points in New 
York.^^ Large numbers of them from Virginia as- 
sembled in Washington in 1862 in Duff Green's 
Row on Capitol Hill where they were organ- 
ized as a camp, out of which came a contraband 
school, after being moved to the McClellan Bar- 
racks. ^^ Then there was in the District of Co- 
lumbia another group known as Freedmen's vil- 
lage on Arlington Heights. It was said that, in 
1864, 30,000 to 40,000 Negroes had come from 
the plantations to the District of Columbia. ^^ 
It happened here too as in most cases of this 
migration that the Negroes were on hand before 
the officials grappling with many other problems 
could determine exactly what could or should 
be done with them. The camps near "Washing- 
ton fortunately became centers for the employ- 
ment of contrabands in the city. Those repair- 
ing to Fortress Monroe were distributed as 
laborers among the farmers of that vicinity. ^^ 

13 Beport of the Committee of Eei)resentatives, etc., p. 3. 

14 At an entertainment of this school^ Senator Pomeroy of 
Kansas, voicing the sentiment of Lincoln^ spoke in favor of a 
scheme to colonize Negroes in Central America. 

15 Special Beport of the United States Commission of Educa- 
tion on the Schools of the District of Columbia, p. 215. 

16 Christian Examiner, LXXVI, p. 349. 



lOG A Century of Negro Migration 

In some of these camps, and especially in those 
of the West, the refugees were finally sent out 
to other sections in need of labor, as in the cases 
of the contrabands assembled with the Union 
army at first at Grand Junction and later at 
Memphis.^" 

There were three types of these camp commu- 
nities which attracted attention as places for 
free labor experimentation. These were at Port 
Koyal, on the Mississippi in the neighborhood of 
Vicksburg, and in Lower Louisiana and Vir- 
ginia. The first trial of free labor of blacks on 
a large scale in a slave State was made in Port 
Eoyal.^^ The experiment was generally success- 
ful. By industry, thrift and orderly conduct 
the Negroes showed their appreciation for their 
new opportunities. In the Mississippi section 
invaded by the northern arm}^ General Thomas 
opened what he called Infirmary Farms which 
he leased to Negroes on certain terms which 
they usually met successfully. The same plan, 
however, was not so successful in the Lower 
Mississippi section. ^*^ The failure in this sec- 
tion was doubtless due to the inferior type of 
blacks in the lower cotton belt where Negroes 
had been more brutalized by slavery. 

In some cases, these refugees experienced 

IT Eaton, Lincoln, Grant and the Freedmen, pp. 18, 30. 

" Pierce, The Freedmen of Port Eoyal, South Carolina, Offi- 
cial Reports; and Pearson, Letters from Fort Eoyal written at 
the Time of the Civil War. 

IB Christian Examiner, LXXVI, p. 354. 



Confusing Movements 107 

many hardships. It was charged that they were 
worked hard, badly treated and deprived of all 
their wages except what was given them for 
rations and a scanty pittance, wholly insufficient 
to purchase necessary clothing and provide 
for their families.^^ Not a few of the refugees 
for these reasons applied for permission to re- 
turn to their masters and sometimes such per- 
mission was granted; for, although under mil- 
itary authority, they were by order of Congress 
to be considered as freemen. The^e voluntary 
slaves, of course, were few and the authorities 
were not thereby impressed with the thought 
that Negroes would prefer to be slaves, should 
they be treated as freemen rather than as 
brutes.^^ 

It became increasingly difficult, however, to 
handle this problem. In the first place, it was 
not an easy matter to find soldiers well disposed 
to serve the Negroes in any manner whatever 
and the officers of the army had no desire to 
force them to render such services since those 
thus engaged suffered a sort of social ostracism. 
The same condition obtained in the case of 
caring for those afflicted with disease, until 
there was issued a specific regulation placing 
the contraband sick in charge of the army sur- 
geons. ^^ What the situation in the Mississippi 

20 Contvnental Monthly, II, p. 193. 

21 Beport of the Committee of Eepresentatives of the New 
York Yearly Meeting of Friends, p. 12, 

22 Eaton, Lincoln, Grant and the Freedmen, p. 2. 



108 A Century of Negro Migration 

Valley was during these montlis has been well 
described by an observer, saying: ''I hope I may 
never be called on again to witness the horrible 
scenes I saw in those first days of history of the 
freedmen in the Mississippi Valley. Assistants 
were hard to find, especially the kind that would 
do any good in the camps. A detailed soldier 
in each camp of a thousand people was the best 
that could be done and his duties were so on- 
erous that he ended by doing nothing. In re- 
viewing the condition of the people at that time, 
I am not surprised at the marvelous stories told 
by visitors who caught an occasional glimpse of 
the misery and wretchedness in these camps. 
Our efforts to do anything for these people, as 
they herded together in masses, when founded 
on any expectation that they would help them- 
selves, often failed; they had become so com- 
pletely broken down in spirit, through suffering, 
that it was almost impossible to arouse them."^^ 
A few sympathetic officers and especially the 
chaplains undertook to relieve the urgent cases 
of distress. They could do little, however, to 
handle all the problems of the unusual situation 
until they engaged the attention of the higher 
officers of the army and the federal function- 
aries in Washington. After some delay this 
was finally done and special officers were de- 

23 Eaton, Lincoln, Grant and the Freedmen, p. 19. See also 
Botume's First Days Amongst the Contrabands. This work 
vividly portrays conditions among the refugees assembled at 
points in South Carolina. 



Confusing Movements 109 

tailed to take charge of the contrabands. The 
Negroes were assembled in camps and employed 
according to instructions from the Secretary of 
War as teamsters, laborers and the like on forts 
and railroads. Some were put to picking, gin- 
ning, baling and removing cotton on plantations 
abandoned by their masters. General Grant, as 
early as 1862, was making further use of them 
as fatigue men in the department of the sur- 
geon-general, the quartermaster and the com- 
missary. He believed then that such Negroes 
as did well in these more humble positions 
should be made citizens and soldiers.^^ As a 
matter of fact out of this very suggestion came 
the policy of arming the Negroes, the first reg- 
iment of whom was recruited under orders is- 
sued by General Hunter at Port Royal, South 
Carolina in 1862. As the arming of the slave 
to participate in this war did not generally 
please the white people who considered the 
struggle a war between civilized groups, this 
policy could not offer general relief to the con- 
gested contraband camps. ^^ 

A better system of handling the fugitives was 
finally worked out, however, with a general 
superintendent at the head of each department, 
supported by a number of competent assistants. 
More explicit instructions were given as to the 
manner of dealing with the situation. It was to 

24 Eaton, Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen, p. 15. 

25 Williams, Negro in the Rebellion, pp. 90-98. 



110 A Century of Negro Migration 

be the duty of the superintendent of contra- 
bands, says the order, to organize them into 
working parties in saving the cotton, as pioneers 
on raih-oads and steamboats, and in any way 
where their sei-vices could be made available. 
Where labor was performed for private indi- 
viduals they were charged in accordance with 
the orders of the commander of the department. 
In case they were directed to save abandoned 
crops of cotton for the benefit of the United 
States Government, the officer selling such crops 
would turn over to the superintendent of con- 
trabands the proceeds of the sale, which to- 
gether with other earnings were used for cloth- 
ing and feeding the Negroes. Clothing sent by 
philanthropic persons to these camps was re- 
ceived and distributed by the superintendent. 
In no case, however, were Negroes to be forced 
into the service of the United States Govern- 
ment or to be enticed away from their homes 
except when it became a military necessity.^*' 

Some order out of the chaos eventually de- 
veloped, for as John Eaton, one of the workers 
in the West, reported: "There was no promis- 
cuous intermingling. Families were estab- 
lished Ijy themselves. Every man took care of 
his own wife and children." " One of the most 
touching features of our Work," says he, "was 

-•0 Official Records of the War of the Bebellion, VII, pp. 503, 
510, 560, 595, 628, 668, 698, 699, 711, 723, 739, 741, 757, 769, 
787, 801, 802, 811, 818, 842, 923, 934; VIII, pp. 444, 445, 451, 
464, 555, 556, 564, 584, 637, 642, 686, 690, 693, 825. 



Confusing Movements 111 

the eagerness with which colored men and 
women availed themselves of the opportunities 
offered them to legalize unions already formed, 
some of which had been in existence for a long 
time. "^^ ' ' Chaplain A. S, Fiske on one occasion 
married in about an hour one hundred and nine- 
teen couples at one service, chiefly those who 
had long lived together." Letters from the 
Virginia camps and from those of Port Royal 
indicate that this favorable condition generally 
obtained.^^ 

This unusual problem in spite of additional 
effort, however, would not readily admit of solu- 
tion. Benevolent workers of the North, there- 
fore, began to minister to the needs of these un- 
fortunate blacks. They sent considerable sums 
of money, increasing quantities of clothing and 
even some of their most devoted men and women 
to toil among them as social workers and teach- 
^j.g 29 These efforts also took organized form 
in various parts of the North under the direc- 
tion of The Pennsylvania Freedmen's Relief 
Association, The Tract Society, The American 
Missionary Association, Pennsylvania Friends 
Freedmen's Relief Association, Old School 
Presbyterian Mission, The Reformed Presby- 
terian Mission, The New England Freedmen's 

27 Eaton, Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen, pp. 34-35. 

28 Ames, From a New England Woman's Diary, passim; and 
Pearson, Letters from Fort Royal, passim. 

29 Ames, From a New England Woman's Diary in 1865, 
passim. 



112 A Century of Negro Migration 

Aid Committee, The Neiv England Freedmen's 
Aid Society, The Neiv England Freedmen's Mis- 
sion, The Washington Christian Union, The 
Uniuersalists of Maine, The New York Freed- 
men's Relief Association, The Hartford Relief 
Society, The National Freedmen's Relief Asso- 
ciation of the District of Columbia, and finally 
the Freedmen's Bureau.^^ 

As an outlet to the congested grouping of Ne- 
groes and poor whites in the war camps it was 
arranged to send a number of them to the loyal 
States as fast as there presented themselves op- 
portunities for finding homes and employment. 
Cairo, Illinois, in the West, became the center of 
such activities extending its ramifications into 
all parts of the invaded southern territory. 
Some of the refugees permanently settled in the 
North, taking up the work abandoned by the 
northern soldiers who went to war.^^ It was 
soon found necessary to appoint a superintend- 
ent of such affairs at Cairo, for there were those 
who, desiring to lead a straggling life, had to be 
restrained from crime by military surveillance 
and regulations requiring labor for self-support. 
Exactly how many whites and blacks were thus 
aided to reach northern communities cannot be 
determined but in view of the frequent mention 
of their movements by travellers the number 

80 Special Ecport of the United States Commissioner of Edu- 
cation on the Schools of the District of Columbia, p. 217. 
8» Eaton, Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen, p. 37. 



Confusing Movements - 113 

must liave been considerable. In some cases, as 
in Lawrence, Kansas, there were assembled 
enough freedmen to constitute a distinct 
group.^^ Speaking of this settlement the editor 
of the Alton Telegraph said in 1862 that al- 
though they amounted to many hundreds not 
one, that he could learn of, had been a public 
charge. They readily found employment at fair 
wages, and soon made themselves comfortable.^^ 
There was a little apprehension that the North 
would be overrun by such blacks. Some had no 
such fear, however, for the reason that the cen- 
sus did not indicate such a movement. Many 
slaves were freed in the North prior to 1860, 
yet with all the emigration from the slave States 
to the North there were then in all the Northern 
States but 226,152 free blacks, while there were 
in the slave States 261,918, an excess of 35,766 
in the slave States. Frederick Starr believed 
that during the Civil War there might be an in^ 
flux for a few months but it would not con- 
tinue.^'* They would return when sure that they 
would be free. Starr thought that, if necessary, 
these refugees might be used in building the 
much desired Pacific Railroad to divert them 
from the North.^^ 

32 Eaton, Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen, p. 38. 
S3 Ibid., p. 39. 

34 Starr, What shall ie done with the People of Color in the 
United States, p. 25; Ward, Contrabands, pp. 3, 4, 

35 It is said that Lincoln suggested colonizing the contra- 
bands in South America. 



114 A Century of Negro Migration 

There was little ground for this apprehen- 
sion, in fact, if their readjustment and develop- 
ment in the contraband camps could be consid- 
ered an indication of what the Negroes would 
eventually do. Taking all things into consid- 
eration, most unbiased observers felt that blacks 
in the camps deserved well of their bene- 
factors.2^ According to Levi Coffin, these con- 
trabands were, in 1864, disposed of as follows : 
''In military services as soldiers, laundresses, 
cooks, officers' servants and laborers in the 
various staff departments, 41,150; in cities, on 
plantations and in freedmen's villages and 
cared for, 72,500. Of these 62,300 were entirely 
self-supporting, just as any industrial class any- 
where else, as planters, mechanics, barbers, 
hackmen and draymen, conducting enterprises 
on their own responsibility or working as hired 
laborers." The remaining 10,200 received sub- 
sistence from the government. 3,000 of these 
were members of families whose heads were 
carrying on plantations, and had undertaken 
cultivation of 4,000 acres of cotton, pledging 
themselves to pay the government for their sub- 
sistence from the first income of the crop. The 
other 7,200 included the paupers, that is, all Ne- 
groes over and under the self-supporting age, 
the crippled and sick in hospitals. This class, 
however, instead of being unproductive, had 
then under cultivation 500 acres of corn, 790 

^<i Atlantic Monthly, XII, p. 308. 



Confusing Movemenic;:/ 115 

acres of vegetables, and 1,500 acres of cotton, 
besides working at wood chopping and other in- 
dustries. There were reported jjiihe aggregate 
over 100,000 acres of cotton -under cultivation, 
7,000 acres of which weriiJjieased and cultivated 
by blacks. Some K^xroes were managing as 
many as 300 or 400 Hcres each.^'^ Statistics 
showing exactly how mfcch the numbers of con- 
trabands in the various I'vranches of the service 
increased are wanting, but in view of the fact 
that the few thousand soli^iers here given in- 
creased to about 200,000 before the close of the 
Civil War, the other numbers must have been 
considerable, if they all grew the least propor- 
tionately. 

Much industry was shown among these ref- 
ugees. Under this new system they acquired 
the idea of ownership, and of the security of 
wages and learned to see the fundamental dif- 
ference between freedom and slavery. Some 
Yankees, however, seeing that they did less 
work than did laborers in the North, considered 
them lazy, but the lack of industry was cus- 
tomary in the South and a river should not be 
expected to rise higher than its source. One of 
their superintendents said that they worked well 
without being urged, that there was among 
them a public opinion against idleness, which 
answered for discipline, and that those put to 
work with soldiers labored longer and did the 

37 Levi CoflS.li, Reminiscences, p. 671. 



IIG A iyMury of Negro Migration 

nicer parts. ''In natural tact and the faculty of 
getting a livalihood," says the same writer, "the 
contrabands ai:^, inferior to the Yankees, but 
quite equal to the. mass of southern popula- 
tion."^^ The Negro^j^ also showed capacity to 
organize labor and use ct^pital in the promotion 
of enterprises. Many o/;' them purchased land 
and cultivated it to grea^ profit both to the com- 
munity and to themsQ^Lves. Others entered the 
service of the government as mechanics and 
contractors, from thql employment of which some 
of them realized handsome incomes. 

The more important development, however, 
was that of manhood. This was best observed 
in their growing consciousness of rights, and 
their readiness to defend them, even when en- 
croached upon by members of the white race. 
They quickly learned to appreciate freedom and 
exhibited evidences of manhood in their desire 
for the comforts and conveniences of life. They 
readily purchased articles of furniture within 
their means, bringing their home equipment up 
to the standard of that of persons similarly cir- 
cumstanced. The indisposition to labor was 
overcome ''in a healthy nature by instinct and 
motives of superior forces, such as love of life, 
the desire to be clothed and fed, the sense of 
security derived from provision for the future, 
the feeling of self-respect, the love of family 
and children and the convictions of duty."^^ 

^^ AUantic Monthly, XII, p. 309. 
so/buZ., XII, pp. 310-311. 



Confusing Movements 117 

These enterprises, begun in doubt, soon 
ceased to be a bare hope or possibility. They 
became during the war a fruition and a con- 
summation, in that they produced Negroes "who 
would work for a living and fight for free- 
dom." They were, therefore, considered 
"adapted to civil society." They had "shown 
capacity for knowledge, for free industry, for 
subordination to law and discipline, for soldierly 
fortitude, for social and family relations, for 
religious culture and aspiration. These qual- 
ities," said the observer, "when stirred, and sus- 
tained by the incitements and rewards of a just 
society, and combining with the currents of our 
continental civilization, will, under the guidance 
of a benevolent Providence which forgets 
neither them nor us, make them a constantly 
progressive race; and secure them ever after 
from the calamity of another enslavement, and 
ourselves from the worst calamity of being 
their oppressors. "^^ 

It is clear that these smaller numbers of Ne- 
groes under favorable conditions could be easily 
adjusted to a new environment. When, how- 
ever, all Negroes were declared free there set 
in a confused migration which was much more 
of a problem. The first thing the Negro did 
after realizing that he was free was to roam 
over the country to put his freedom to a test. 
To do this, according to many writers, he fre- 

iorbid., p. 311. 



118 A Century of Negro Migration 

quently changed liis name, residence, employ- 
ment and wife, sometimes carrying with him 
from the plantation the fruits of his own lahor. 
Many of them easily acquired a dog and a gun 
and were disposed to devote their time to the 
chase until the assistance in the form of mules 
and land expected from the government ma- 
terialized. Their emancipation, therefore, was 
interpreted not only as freedom from slavery 
but from responsibility.^^ Where they were 
going they did not know but the towns and cities 
became verv attractive to them. 

Speaking of this upheaval in Virginia, Ecken- 
rode says that many of them roamed over the 
country without restraint.^^ "Released from 
their accustomed bonds," says Hall, ''and filled 
with a pleasing, if not vague, sense of uncon- 
trolled freedom, they flocked to the cities with 
little hope of obtaining remunerative work. 
Wagon loads of them were brought in from the 
country by the soldiers and dumped down to 
shift for themselves. "^^ Eef erring to the pro- 
clamation of freedom, in Georgia, Thompson as- 
serts that their most general and universal re- 
sponse was to pick up and leave the home place 
to go somewhere else, preferably to a town. The 
lure of the city was strong to the blacks, appeal- 
ing to their social natures, to their inherent love 

<i Hamilton, Ecconstruciion in North Carolina, pp. 156, 157. 
<2 Eckenrode, Political History of Virginia during the Recon- 
struction, p. 42. 

■«3 Hall, Andrew Johnson, p. 258. 



Confusing Movements 119 

for a crowd. ' '^"^ Davis maintains that thousands 
of the 70,000 Negroes in Florida crowded into the 
Federal military camps and into towns upon 
realizing that they were free.^'^ According to 
Ficklen, the exodus of the slaves from the neigh- 
boring plantations of Louisiana into Baton 
Rouge, Carrollton and New Orleans was so 
great as to strain the resources of the Federal 
authorities to support them. Ten thousand 
poured into New Orleans alone.^^ Fleming 
records that upon leaving their homes the blacks 
collected in gangs at the cross roads, in the vil- 
lages and towns, especially near the military 
posts. The towns were filled with crowds of 
blacks who left their homes with absolutely noth- 
ing, "thinking that the government would care 
for them, or more probably, not thinking at 
all."^^ 

The portrayal of these writers of this phase 
of Reconstruction history contains a general 
truth, but in some cases the picture is over- 
drawn. The student of history must bear in 
mind that practically all of our histories of that 
period are based altogether on the testimony 
of prejudiced whites and are written from their 
point of view. Some of these writers have 
aimed to exaggerate the vagrancy of the blacks 

44 Thompson, Reconstruction in Georgia, p. 44. 

45 Davis, Reconstruction in Florida, p. 341. 

46 Ficklen, History of Reconstruction in Louisiana, p. 118. 

47 Fleming, The Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, 
p. 271. 

9 



120 A Century of Negro Migration 

to justify the radical procedure of the whites in 
dealing with it. The Negroes did wander about 
thoughtlessly, believing that this was the most 
effective way to enjoy their freedom. But noth- 
ing else could be expected from a class who had 
never felt anything but the heel of oppression. 
History shows that such vagrancy has always 
followed the immediate emancipation of a large 
number of slaves. Many Negroes who flocked 
to the towns and army camps, moreover, had 
like their masters and poor whites seen their 
homes broken up or destroyed by the invading 
Union armies. Whites who had never learned 
to work were also roaming and in some cases 
constituted marauding bands.^^ 

There was, moreover, an actual drain of la- 
borers to the lower and more productive lands 
in Mississippi and Louisiana.^^ This developed 
later into a more considerable movement toward 
the Southwest just after the Civil War, the ex- 
odus being from South Carolina, Georgia, Ala- 
bama and Mississippi to Louisiana, Arkansas 
and Texas. Here was the pioneering spirit, a 
going to the land of more economic opportuni- 
ties. This slow movement continued from about 
1865 to 1875, when the development of the 
numerous railway systems gave rise to land 
speculators who induced whites and blacks to go 
west and southwest. It was a migration of in- 

••8 Thompson, Eeconstruction in Georgia, p. 69. 
<o Ibid., p. 69. 



Confusing Movements 121 

dividuals, but it was reported that as many as 
35,000 Negroes were then persuaded to leave 
South Carolina and Georgia for Arkansas and 
Texas.^*^ 

The usual charge that the Negro is naturally 
migratory is not true. This impression is often 
received by persons who hear of the thousands 
of Negroes who move from one place to another 
from year to year because of the desire to im- 
prove their unhappy condition. In this there is 
no tendency to migrate but an urgent need to 
escape undesirable conditions. In fact, one of 
the American Negroes' greatest shortcomings 
is that they are not sufficiently pioneering. Sta- 
tistics show that the whites have more inclina- 
tion to move from State to State than the Negro. 
To prove this assertion,^^ Professor William 0. 
Scroggs hasi shown that, in 1910, 16.6 per cent 
of the Negroes had moved to some other State 
than that in which they were born, while during 
the same period 22.4 per cent of the whites had 
done the same.^^ 

The South, however, was not disposed to look 
at the vagrancy of the ex-slaves so philosoph- 
ically. That section had been devastated by 

50 This exodus became considerable again in 1888 and 1889 
and the Negro population has continued in this direction of 
plentitude of land including not only Arkansas and Texas but 
Louisiana and Oklahoma, all which received in this way by 
1900 about 200,000 Negroes. 

5''- American Journal of Political Economy, XXII, pp. 10, 40. 

52 Ihid., XXV, p. 1038. 



122 A Century of Negro Migration 

war and to rebuild these waste places reliable 
labor was necessary. Legislatures of the slave 
States, therefore, immediately after the close 
of the war, granted the Negro nominal freedom 
but enacted measures of vagrancy and labor so 
as to reduce the Negro again almost to the sta- 
tus of a slave. White magistrates were given 
wide discretion in adjudging Negroes va- 
grants.^3 Negroes had to sign contracts to work. 
If without what was considered a just cause the 
Negro left the employ of a planter, the former 
could be arrested and forced to work and in 
some sections with ball and chain. If the em- 
ployer did not care to take him back he could 
be hired out by the county or confined in jail. 
Mississippi, Louisiana and South Carolina had 
further drastic features. By local ordinance 
in Louisiana every Negro had to be in the serv- 
ice of som^e white person, and by special laws 
of South Carolina and Mississippi the Negro be- 
came subject to a master almost in the same 
sense in which he was prior to emancipation.^* 
These laws, of course, convinced the govern- 
ment of the United States that the South had 
not yet decided to let slavery go and for that 
reason military rule and Congressional Eecon- 
struction followed. In this respect the South 
did itself a great injury, for many of the provi- 
sions of the black codes, especially the vagrancy 

83 Mecklin, Blach Codes. 

«« Dunning, Heconstruction, pp. 54, 59, 110. 



Confusing Movements 123 

laws, were unnecessary. Most Negroes soon 
realized that freedom did not mean relief from 
responsibility and they quickly settled down to 
work after a rather protracted and exciting 
holiday.^^ 

During the last year of and immediately after 
the Civil War there set in another movement, 
not of a large number of Negroes but of the in- 
telligent class who had during years of residence 
in the North enjoyed such advantages of con- 
tact and education as to make them desirable 
and useful as leaders in the Reconstruction of 
the South and the remaking of the race. In 
their tirades against the Carpet-bag politicians 
who handled the Eeconstruction situation so 
much to the dissatisfaction of the southern 
whites, historians often forget to mention also 
that a large number of the Negro leaders who 
participated in that drama were also natives or 
residents of Northern States. 

Three motives impelled these blacks to go 
South. Some had found northern communities 
so hostile as to impede their progress, many 
wanted to rejoin relatives from whom they had 
been separated by their flight from the land of 
slavery, and others were moved by the spirit of 
adventure to enter a new field ripe with all sorts 
of opportunities. This movement, together with 
that of migration to large urban communities, 
largely accounts for the depopulation and the 

BsDuBois, Freedmen's Bureau. 



124 A Century of Negro Migration 

consequent decline of certain colored communi- 
ties in the North after 1865. 

Some of the Negroes who returned to the 
South became men of national prominence. 
William J. Simmons, who prior to the Civil War 
was carried from South Carolina to Pennsyl- 
vania, returned to do religious and educational 
work in Kentucky. Bishop James W. Hood, of 
the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, 
went from Connecticut to North Carolina to en- 
gage in similar work. Honorable E. T. Greener, 
the first Negro graduate of Harvard, went from 
Philadelphia to teach in the District of Colum- 
bia and later to be a professor in the University 
of South Carolina. F. L. Cardoza, educated at 
the University of Edinburgh, returned to South 
Carolina and became State Treasurer. E. B. 
Elliot, born in Boston and educated in England, 
settled in South Carolina from which he was 
sent to Congress. 

John M. Langston was taken to Ohio and edu- 
cated but came back to Virginia his native State 
from which he was elected to Congress. J. T. 
A^^lite left Indiana to enter politics in Arkansas, 
becoming State Senator and later commissioner 
of public works and internal improvements. 
Judge Mifflin Wister Gibbs, a native of Phila- 
delphia, purposely settled in Arkansas where he 
served as city judge and Eegister of United 
States Land Office. T. Morris Chester, of Pitts- 
burgh, finally made his way to Louisiana where 



Confusing Movements 125 

he served with distinction as a lawyer and held 
the position of Brigadier-General in charge of 
the Louisiana State Guards under the Kellogg 
government. Joseph Carter Corbin, who was 
taken from Virginia to be educated at Chilli- 
cothe, Ohio, went later to Arkansas where he 
served as chief clerk in the post office at Little 
Rock and later as State Superintendent of 
Schools. Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback, 
who moved north for education and opportu- 
nity, returned to enter politics in Louisiana, 
which honored him with several important posi- 
tions among which was that of Acting Governor. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE EXODUS TO THE WEST 

HAVING come through the halcyon days of 
the Reconstruction only to find themselves 
reduced almost to the status of slaves, many Ne- 
groes deserted the South for the promising west 
to grow up with the country. The immediate 
causes were doubtless political. Bulldozing, a 
rather vague term, covering all such crimes as 
political injustice and persecution, was the source 
of most complaint. The abridgment of the Ne- 
groes' rights had affected them as a great 
calamity. They had learned that voting is one 
of the highest privileges to be obtained in this 
life and they wanted to go where they might 
still exercise that privilege. That persecution 
was the main cause was disputed, however, as 
there were cases of Negroes migrating from 
parts where no such conditions obtained. Yet 
some of the whites giving their version of the 
situation admitted that violent methods had 
been used so to intimidate the Negroes as to 
compel them to vote according to the dictation 
of the whites. It was also learned that the bull- 
dozers concerned in dethroning the non-taxpay- 
ing blacks were an impecunious and irrespon- 

126 



The Exodus to the West 127 

sible group themselves, led by men of the 
wealthy class. ^ 

Coming to the defense of the whites, some 
said that much of the persecution with which the 
blacks were afflicted was due to the fear of 
Negro uprisings, the terror of the days of slav- 
ery. The whites, however, did practically noth- 
ing to remove the underlying causes. They did 
not encourage education and made no efforts to 
cure the Negroes of faults for which slavery 
itself was to be blamed and consequently could 
not get the confidence of the blacks. The races 
tended rather to drift apart. The Negroes lived 
in fear of reenslavement while the whites be- 
lieved that the war between the North and 
South would soon be renewed. Some Negroes 
thinking likewise sought to go to the North to be 
among friends. The blacks, of course, had come 
so to regard southern whites as their enemies 
as to render impossible a voluntary division in 
politics. 

Among the worst of all faults of the whites 
was their unwillingness to labor and their tend- 
ency to do mischief.2 As there were so many 
to live on the labor of the Negroes they were re- 
duced to a state a little better than that of bond- 
age. The master class was generally unfair to 
the blacks. No longer responsible for them as 
slaves, the planters endeavored after the war to 

■i- Atlantic Monthly, LXIV, p. 222; Nation, XXVIII, pp. 242, 
386. 

2 Thompson, Reconstruction in Georgia, p. 69. 



128 A Century of Negro Migration 

get their labor for nothing. The Negroes them- 
selves had no land, no mules, no presses nor 
cotton gins, and they could not acquire sufficient 
capital to obtain these things. They were made 
victims of fraud in signing contracts which they 
could not understand and had to suffer the con- 
sequent privations and want aggravated by rob- 
bery and murder by the Ku Klux Klan.^ 

The murder of Negroes was common through- 
out the South and especially in Louisiana. In 
1875, General Sheridan said that as many as 
3,500 persons had been killed and wounded in 
that State, the great majority of whom being 
Negroes ; that 1,884 were killed and wounded in 
1868, and probably 1,200 between 1868 and 1875. 
Frightful massacres occurred in the parishes of 
Bossier, Catahoula, Saint Bernard, Grant and 
Orleans. As most of these murders were for 
political reasons, the offenders were regarded by 
their communities as heroes rather than as crim- 
inals. A massacre of Negroes began in the 
parish of St. Landry on the 28th of September 
and continued for three days, resulting in the 
death of from 300 to 400. Thirteen captives 
were taken from the jail and shot and as many as 
twenty-five dead bodies were found burned in 
the woods. There broke out in the parish of 
Boissier another three-day riot during which 
two hundred Negroes were massacred. More 
than forty blacks were killed in the parish of 

8 Williams, Eistory of the Negro Bace, II, p. 375. 



The Exodus to the West 129 

Caddo during the following month. In fact, the 
number of murders, miaimings and whippings 
during these months aggregated over one thou- 
sand.* The result was that the intelligent Ne- 
groes were either intimidated or killed so that 
the illiterate masses of Negro voters might be 
ordered to refrain from voting the Republican 
ticket to strengthen the Democrats or be sub- 
jected to starvation through the operation of 
the mischievous land tenure and credit system. 
What was not done in 1868 to overthrow the 
Republican regime was accomplished by a re- 
newed and extended use of such drastic meas- 
ures throughout the South in 1876. 

Certain whites maintained, however, that the 
unrest was due to the work of radical politicians 
at the North, who had sent their emissaries 
south to delude the Negroes into a fever of mi- 
gration. Some said it was a scheme to force 
the nomination of a certain Republican candi- 
date for President in 1880. Others laid it to the 
charge of the defeated white and black Repub- 
licans who had been thrown from power by the 
whites upon regaining control of the recon- 
structed States.^ A few insisted that a speech 
delivered by Senator Windom in 1879 had given 
stimulus to the migration.^ Many southerners 
said that speculators in Kansas had adopted 

4 Williams, History of the Negro Mace, IIj pu 374. 

5 American Journal of Social Science, XI, p, 34. 

6 Ibid., XI, p. 33. 



130 A Century of Negro Migration 

this plan to increase the value of their land. 
Then there were other theories as to the funda- 
mental causes, each consisting of a charge of 
one political faction that some other had given 
rise to the movement, varying according as they 
were Bourbons, conservatives, native white Re- 
publicans, carpet-bag Republicans, or black Re- 
publicans. 

Impartial observers, however, were satisfied 
that the movement was spontaneous to the ex- 
tent that the blacks were ready and willing to 
go. Probably no more inducement was offered 
them than to other citizens among whom 
land companies sent agents to distribute lit- 
erature. But the fundamental causes of the 
unrest were economic, for since the Civil War 
race troubles have never been sufficient to set 
in motion a large number of Negroes. The dis- 
content resulted from the land-tenure and credit 
systems, which had restored slavery in a modi- 
fied form.^ 

After the Civil War a few Negroes in those 
parts, where such opportunities were possible, 
invested in real estate offered for sale by the 
impoverished and ruined planters of the con- 
quered commonwealths. Wihen, however, the 
Negroes lost their political power, their property 
was seized on the plea for delinquent taxes and 
they were forced into the ghetto of towns and 
cities, as it became a crime punishable by social 

T Nation, XXVIII, pp. 242, 386. 



The Exodus to the West 131 

proscription to sell Negroes desirable residences. 
The aim was to debase all Negroes to the status 
of menial labor in conformity with the usual 
contention of the South that slavery is the nor- 
mal condition of the blacks.^ 

'Most of the land of the South, however, al- 
ways remained as large tracts held by the plant- 
ers of cotton, who never thought of alienating it 
to the Negroes to make them a race of small 
farmers. In fact, they had not the means to 
make extensive purchases of land, even if the 
planters had been disposed to transfer it. Still 
subject to the experimentation of white men, the 
Negroes accepted the plan of paying them 
wages ; but this failed in all parts except in the 
sugar district, where the blacks remained con- 
tented save when disturbed by political move- 
ments. They then tried all system's of working 
on shares in the cotton districts; but this was 
finally abandoned because the planters in some 
cases were not able to advance the Negro tenant 
supplies, pending the growth of the crop, and 
some found the Negro too indifferent and lazy 
to make the partnership desirable. Then came 
the renting system which during the Eecon- 
struction period was general in the cotton dis- 
tricts. This system threw the tenant on his own 
responsibility and frequently made him the vic- 
tim of his own ignorance and the rapacity of the 
white man. As exorbitant prices were charged 

8 Williams, History of the Negro Bace, II, p. 378. 



132 A Century of Negro Migration 

for rent, usually six to ten dollars an acre for 
land worth fifteen to thirty dollars an acre, the 
Xegro tenant not only did not accumulate any- 
thing but had reason to rejoice at the end of the 
year, if he found himself out of debt.^ 

Along with this went the credit system which 
furnished the capstone of the economic structure 
so harmful to the Negro tenant. This system 
made the Negroes dependent for their living on 
an advance of supplies of food, clothing or tools 
during the year, secured by a lien on the crop 
when harvested. As the Negroes had nO' chance 
to learn business methods during the days of 
slavery, they fell a prey to a class of loan sharks, 
harpies and vampires, who established stores 
everywhere to extort from these ignorant ten- 
ants by the mischievous credit system their 
whole income before their crops could be gath- 
ered.^" Some planters who sympathized with 
the Negroes brought forward the scheme of pro- 
tecting them by advancing certain necessities at 
more reasonable prices. As the planter himself, 
however, was subject to usury, the scheme did 
not give much relief. The Negroes' crop, there- 
fore, when gathered went either to the merchant 
or to the planter to pay the rent ; for the mer- 
chant's supplies were secured by a mortgage on 
the tenant's personal property and a pledge of 
the growing crop. This often prevented Negro 

Atlantic Monthly, LXIV, p. 225. 
iolbid., p. 226. 



The Exodus to the West 133 

laborers in the employ of black tenants from 
getting their wages at the end of the year, for, 
although the laborer had also a lien on the grow- 
ing crop, the merchant and the planter usually 
had theirs recorded first and secured thereby 
the support of the law to force the payment of 
their claims. The Negro tenant then began the 
year with three mortages, covering all he owned, 
his labor for the coming year and all he expected 
to acquire during that twelvemonth. He paid 
"one-third of his product for the use of the land, 
he paid an exorbitant fee for recording the con- 
tract by which he paid his pound of flesh; he 
was charged two or three times as much as he 
ought to pay for ginning his cotton ; and, finally, 
he turned over his crop to be eaten up in com- 
missions, if any was still left to him."" 

The worst of all results from this iniquitous 
system was its effect on the Negroes themselves. 
It made the Negroes extravagant and unscrupu- 
lous. Convinced that no share of their crop 
would come to them when harvested, they did 
not exert themselves to produce what they could. 
They often abandoned their crops before harvest, 
knowing that they had already spent them. 
In cases, however, where the Negro tenants had 
acquired mules, horses or tools upon which the 
speculator had a mortgage, the blacks were actu- 
ally bound to their landlords to secure the prop- 
erty. It was soon evident that in the end the 

^■^ Atlantic Monthly, LXIV, p. 224. 



J 



134 A Century of Negro Migration 

white man himself was the loser by this evil 
system. There appeared waste places in the 
country. Improvements were wanting, land lay 
idle for lack of sufficient labor, and that which 
was cultivated yielded a diminishing return on 
account of the ignorance and improvidence of 
those tilling it. These Negroes as a rule had 
lost the ambition to become landowners, pre- 
ferring to invest their surplus money in per- 
sonal effects ; and in the few cases where the Ne- 
groes were induced to undertake the buying of 
land, they often tired of the responsibility and 
gave it up.^^ 

There began in the spring of 1879, therefore, 
an emigration of the Negroes from Louisiana 
and Mississippi to Kansas. For some time 
there was a stampede from several river par- 
ishes in Louisiana and from counties just oppo- 
site them in Mississippi. It was estimated that 
from five to ten thousand left their homes be- 
fore the movement could be checked. Persons 
of influence soon busied themselves in showing 
the blacks the necessity for remaining in the 
South and those who had not then gone or pre- 
pared to go were persuaded to return to the 
plantations. This lull in the excitement, how- 
ever, was merely temporary, for many Negroes 
had merely returned home to make more ex- 
tensive preparations for leaving the following 
spring. The movement was accelerated by the 

" The Atlantic Monthly, XLIV, p. 223, 



The Exodus to the West 135 

work of two Negro leaders of some note, Moses 
Singleton, of Tennessee, the self-styled Moses 
of the Exodus ; and Henry Adams, of T.ouisiana, 
who credited himself with having organized for 
this purpose as many as 98,000 blacks. 

Taking this movement seriously a convention 
of the leading whites and blacks was held at 
Vicksburg, Mississippi, on the sixth of May, 
1879. This body was controlled mainly by un- 
sympathetic but diplomatic whites. General N. 
R. Miles, of Yazoo County, Mississippi, was 
elected president and A. W. Crandall, of Louisi- 
ana, secretary. After making some meaning- 
less but eloquent speeches the convention ap- 
pointed a committee on credentials and ad- 
journed until the following day. On reassem- 
bling Colonel W. L. Nugent, chairman of the 
the committee, presented a certain preamble 
and resolutions citing causes of the exodus and 
suggesting remedies. Among the causes, 
thought he, were: ''the low price of cotton and 
the partial failure of the crop, the irrational sys- 
tem of planting adopted in some sections 
whereby labor was deprived of intelligence to 
direct it and the presence of economy to make it 
profitable, the vicious system of credit fostered 
by laws permitting laborers and tenants to mort- 
gage crops before they were grown or even 
planted; the apprehension on the part of many 
colored people produced by insidious reports 
circulated among them that their civil and polit- 
ic 



136 A Century of Negro Migration 

ical rights were endangered or were likely to be ; 
the liuiiful and false rumors diligently dissem- 
inated, that by emigrating to Kansas the Ne- 
gi:Q(?^ would obtain lands, mules and money 
from the guv^' ment without cost to them- 
selves, and become independent forever. "^^ 

Referring to the grievances and proposing a 
redress, the committee admitted that errors had 
been committed by the whites and blacks alike, 
as each in turn had controlled the government 
of the States there represented. The committee 
believed that the interests of planters and la- 
borers, landlords and tenants were identical; 
that they must prosper or suffer together; and 
that it was the duty of the planters and land- 
lords of the State there represented to devise 
and adopt some contract by which both parties 
would receive the full benefit of labor governed 
by intelligence and economy. The convention 
affirmed that the Negro race had been placed by 
the constitution of the United States and the 
States there represented, and the laws thereof, 
on a plane of absolute equality with the white 
race; and declared that the Negro race should 
be accorded the practical enjoyment of all civil 
and political rights guaranteed by the said con- 
stitutions and laws. The convention pledged 
itself to use whatever of power and influence it 
possessed to protect the Negro race against all 
dangers in respect to the fair expression of their 

13 The Vicl'shurg Daily Commercial, May 6, 1879. 



The Exodus to the West 137 

wills at the polls, which they apprehended might 
result from fraud, intimidation or bulldozing 
on the part of the whites. And as there could 
be no liberty of action without freedom of 
thought, they demanded that all elections should 
be fair and free and that no repressive measures 
should be employed by the Negroes ''to deprive 
their own race in part of the fullest freedom in 
the exercise of the highest right of citizen- 
ship. "^^ 

The committee then recommended the aboli- 
tion of the mischievous credit system, called 
upon the Negroes to contradict false reports as 
to crimes of the whites against them and, after 
considering the Negroes' right to emigrate, 
urged that they proceed about it with reason. 
Ex-Governor Foote, of Mississippi, submitted a 
plan to establish in every county a committee, 
composed of men who had the confidence of both 
whites and blacks, to be auxiliary to the public 
authorities, to listen to complaints and arbi- 
trate, advise, conciliate or prosecute, as each 
case should demand. But unwilling to do more 
than make temporary concessions, the majority 
rejected Foote 's plan.^^ 

The whites thought also to stop the exodus 
by inducing the steamboat lines not to furnish 
the emigrants transportation. Negroes were 
also detained by writs obtained by preferring 

14 The VicTcshurg Daily Commercial, May 6, 1879. 
isiud., May 6, 1&79. 



138 A Century of Negro Migration 

against them false charges. Some, who were 
willing to let the Negroes go, thought of import- 
ing white and Chinese labor to take their places. 
Hearing of the movement and thinking that he 
could offer a remedy. Senator D. W. Voorhees, 
of Indiana, introduced a resolution in the United 
States Senate authorizing an inquiry into the 
causes of the exodus.^® The movement, how- 
ever, could not be stopped and it became so 
widespread that the people in general were 
forced to give it serious thought. Men in favor 
of it declared their views, organized migration 
societies and appointed agents to promote the 
enterprise of removing the freedmen from the 
South. 

Becoming a national measure, therefore, the 
migration evoked expressions from Frederick 
Douglass and Richard T. Greener, two of the 
most prominent Negroes in the United States. 
Douglass believed that the exodus was ill-timed. 
He saw in it the abandonment of the great prin- 
ciple of protection to persons and property in 
every State of the Union. He felt that if the 
Negroes could not be protected in every State, 
the Federal Government was shorn of its right- 
ful dignity and power, the late rebellion had 
triumphed, the sovereign of the nation was an 
empty vessel, and the power and authority in 
individual States were supreme. He thought, 

^0 Congressional 'Record, 46th Congress, 2d Session, Vol. X, p. 
104. 



The Exodus to the West 139 

therefore, that it was better for the Negroes to 
stay in the South than to go North, as the South 
was a better market for the black man's labor. 
Douglass believed that the Negroes should be 
warned against a nomadic life. He did not see 
any more benefit in the migration to Kansas 
than he had years before in the emigration to 
Africa. The Negroes had a monopoly of labor 
at the South and they would be too insignificant 
in numbers to have such an advantage in the 
North. The blacks were then potentially able 
to elect members of Congress in the South but 
could not hope to exercise such power in other 
parts. Douglass believed, moreover, that this 
exodus did not conform to the ''laws of civiliz- 
ing migration," as the carrying of a language, 
literature and the like of a superior race to an 
inferior; and it did not conform to the geo- 
graphic laws assuring healthy migration from 
east to west in the same latitude, as this was 
from south to north, far away from the climate 
in which the migrants were born.^'^ 

The exodus of the Negroes, however, was 
heartily endorsed by Eichard T. Greener. He 
did not consider it the best remedy for the law- 
lessness of the South but felt that it was a 
salutary one. He did not expect the United States 
to give the oppressed blacks^ in the South the 
protection they needed, as there is no abstract 

17 For a detailed statement of Douglass's views, see the 
American Journal of Social Science, XI, pp. 1-21. 



140 A Century of Negro Migration 

limit to the right of a State to do anything. He 
would not encourage the Negro to lead a wan- 
dering life but in that instance such advice was 
gratuitous. Greener failed to find any analogy 
between African colonization and migration to 
the West as the former was promoted by slave- 
holders to remove the free Negro from the coun- 
try and the other sprang spontaneously from 
the class considering itself aggrieved. " One 
led out of the country to a comparative wilder- 
ness; the other directed to a better land and 
larger opportunities." He did not see how the 
migration to the North would diminish the po- 
tentiality of the Negro in politics, for Massa- 
chusetts first elected Negroes to her General 
Court, Ohio had nominated a Negro representa- 
tive and Illinois another. He showed also that 
Mr. Douglass's objection on the grounds of mi- 
grating from south to north rather than from 
east to west was not historical. He thought 
little of the advice to the Negroes to stick and 
fight it out, for he had evidence that the return 
of the unreconstructed Confederates to power 
in the South would for generations doom the 
blacks to political oppression unknown in the 
annals of a free country. 

Greener showed foresight here in urging the 
Negroes to take up desirable western land be- 
fore it would be preempted by foreigners. As 
the Swedes, Norwegians, Irish, Hebrews and 
others were organizing societies and raising 



The Exodus to the West 141 

funds to promote the migration of their needy 
to these lands, why should the Negroes be de- 
barred? Greener had no apprehension as to the 
treatment the Negroes would receive in the 
West. He connected the movement too with the 
general welfare of the blacks, considering it a 
promising sign that they had learned to run 
from persecution. Having passed their first 
stage, that of appealing to philanthropists, the 
Negroes were then appealing to themselves.^^ 

Feeling very much as Greener did, these Ne- 
groes rushed into Kansas and neighboring 
States in 1879. So many came that some sys- 
tematic relief had to be offered. Mrs. Corn- 
stock, a Quaker lady, organized for this purpose 
the Kansas Freedmen's Relief Association, to 
raise funds and secure for them food and cloth- 
ing. In this work she had the support of Gov- 
ernor J. P. Saint John. There was much suf- 
fering upon arriving in Kansas but relief came 
from various sources. During this year $40,000 
and 500,000 pounds of clothing, bedding and the 
like were used. England contributed 50,000 
pounds of goods and $8,000. In 1879, the ref- 
ugees took up 20,000 acres of land and brought 
3,000 under cultivation. The Relief Association 
at first furnished them with supplies, teams and 
seed, which they profitably used in the produc- 
tion of large crops. Desiring to establish homes, 
they built 300 cabins and saved $30,000 the first 

18 American Journal of Social Science, XI, pp. 22-35. 



142 A Century of Negro Migration 

year. In April, 1,300 refugees liad gathered 
around Wyandotte alone. Up to that date 
60,000 had come to Kansas, nearly 40,000 of 
whom arrived in destitute condition. About 
30,000 settled in the country, some on rented 
lands and others on farms as laborers, leaving 
about 25,000 in cities, where on account of 
crowded conditions and the hard weather many 
greatly suffered. Upon finding employment, 
however, they all did well, most of them becom- 
ing self-supporting within one year after their 
arrival, and few of them coming back to the Ee- 
Kef Association for aid the second time.^^ 
This was especially true of those in Topeka, 
Parsons and Kansas City. 

The people of Kansas did not encourage the 
blacks to come. They even sent messengers to 
the South to advise the Negroes not to migrate 
and, if they did come anyway, to provide them- 
selves with equipment. When they did arrive, 
however, they welcomed and assisted them as 
human beings. Under such conditions the 
blacks established five or six important colonies 
in Kansas alone between 1879 and 1880. Chief 
among these were Baxter Springs, Nicodemus, 
Morton City and Singleton. Governor Saint 
John, of Kansas, reported that they seemed to 
be honest and of good habits, were certainly in- 
dustrious and anxious to work, and so far as 
they had been tried had proved to be faithful 

10 Williams, History of the Negro, II, p. 379. 



The Exodus to the West 143 

and excellent laborers. Giving his observations 
there, Sir George Campbell bore testimony to 
the same report.^*^ Out of these communities 
have come some most progressive black citizens. 
In consideration of their desirability their white 
neighbors have given them their cooperation, 
secured to them the advantages of democratic 
education, and honored a few of them with some 
of the most important positions in the State. 

Although the greater number of these blacks 
went to Kansas, about 5,000 of them sought 
refuge in other Western States. During these 
years, Negroes gradually invaded Indian Terri- 
tory and increased the number already infil- 
trated into and assimilated by the Indian na- 
tions. When assured of their friendly attitude 
toward the Indians, the Negroes were accepted 
by them as equals, even during the days of slav- 

20 " In Kansas City, ' ' said Sir George Campbell^ ' * and still 
more in the suburbs of Kansas proper the Negroes are much 
more numerous than I have yet seen. On the Kansas side they 
form quite a large proportion of the population. They are 
certainly subject to no indignity or ill usage. There the Ne- 
groes seem to have quite taken to work at trades." He saw 
them doing building work, both alone and assisting white men, 
and also painting and other tradesmen's work. On the Kansas 
side, he found a Negro blacksmith, with an establishment of 
his own. He had come from Tennessee after emancipation. 
He had not been back there and did not want to go. He also 
saw black women keeping apple stalls and engaged in other 
such occupations so as to leave him under the impression that 
in the States, which he called intermediate between black and 
white countries the blacks evidently had no difficulty. — See 
American Journal of Social Science, XI, pp. 32, 33. 



144 A Century of Negro Migration 

ery when the blacks on account of the cruelties 
of their masters escaped to the wilderness.^i 
Here we are at sea as to the extent to which this 
invasion and subsequent miscegenation of the 
black and red races extended for the reason that 
neither the Indians nor these migrating Ne- 
groes kept records and the United States Gov- 
ernment has been disposed to classify all mixed 
breeds in tribes as Indians. Having equal op- 
portunity among the red men, the Negroes easily 
succeeded. A traveler in Indian Territory in 
1880 found their condition unusually favorable. 
The cosy homes and promising fields of these 
freedmen attracted his attention as striking evi- 
dences of their thrift. He saw new fences, ad- 
ditions to cabins, new barns, churches and school- 
houses indicating prosperity. Given every priv- 
ilege which the Indians themselves enjoyed, the 
Negroes could not be other than contented.^- 

It was very unfortunate, however, that in 1889, 
when by proclamation of President Harrison 
the Oklahoma Territory was thrown open, the 
intense race prejudice of the white immigrants 
and the rule of the mob prevented a larger 
number of Negroes from settling in that prom- 
ising commonwealth. Long since extensively 
advertised as valuable, the land of Oklahoma 
had become a coveted prize for the adventurous 
squatters invading the territory in defiance of 

^^ American Journal of Social Science, XI, p. 33. 
22 Ibid., XI, p. 33. 



The Exodus to the West 145 

the law before it was declared open for set- 
tlement. 'The rush came with all the excite- 
ment of pioneer days redoubled. Stakes were 
set, parcels of land were claimed, cabins were 
constructed in an hour and towns grew up 
in a day.^^ Then came conflicting claims as to 
titles and rights of preemption culminating in 
fighting and bloodshed. And worst of all, with 
this disorderly group there developed the fixed 
policy of eliminating the Negroes entirely. 

The Negro, however, was not entirely ex- 
cluded. Some had already come into the terri- 
tory and others in spite of the barriers set up 
continued to come.^^ "With the cooperation of the 
Indians, with whom they easily amalgamated, 
they readjusted themselves and acquired suf- 
ficient wealth to rise in the economic world. Al- 
though not generally fortunate, a number of 
them have coal and oil lands from which they 
obtain handsome incomes and a few, like Sara 
Rector, have actually become rich. Dishonest 
white men with the assistance of unprincipled 
officials have defrauded and are still endeav- 
oring to defraud these Negroes of their prop- 
erty, lending them money secured by mortgages 
and obtaining for themselves through the 
courts appointments as the Negroes' guardians. 
They turn out to be the robbers of the Negroes, 

^^ Spectator, LXVII, p. 571; Dublin Beview, CV, p. 187; 
Cosmopolitan, VII, p. 460; Nation, LXVIII, p. 279. 

24 According to the United States Census, of 1910, there are 
137,612 Negroes in Oklahoma. 



146 A Century of Negro Migration 

in case they do not live in a community where 
an enlightened public opinion frowns down upon 

this crime. 

During the later eighties and the early nine- 
ties there were some other interstate movements 
worthy of notice here. The mineral wealth of 
the Appalachian mountains was being exploited. 
Foreigners, at first, were coming into this coun- 
try in sufficiently large numbers to meet the de- 
mand ; but when this supply became inadequate, 
labor agents appealed to the blacks in the South. 
Negroes then flocked to the mining districts of 
Birmingham, Alabama, and to East Tennessee. 
/A large number also migrated from North Caro- 
lina and Virginia to West Virginia and some 
few of the same group to Southern Ohio to take 
the places of those unreasonable strikers who 
often demanded larger increases in wages than 
the income of their employers could permit. 
Many of these Negroes came to West Virginia 
fas is evidenced by the increase in Negro popula- 
'tion of that State. West Virginia had a Negro 
population of 17,980 in 1870; 25,886 in 1880; 
32,690 in 1890; 43,499 in 1900; and 64,173 in 
1910.25 

25 See Censuses of the United States. 



CHAPTER Vin 

THE MIGEATION OF THE TALENTED TENTH 

IN" spite of these interstate movements, the 
Negro still continued as a perplexing prob- 
lem, for the country was unprepared to grant 
the race political and civil rights. Nominal 
equality was forced on the South at the point of 
the sword and the North reluctantly removed 
most of its barriers against the blacks. Some, 
still thinking, however, that the two races could 
not live together as equals, advocated ceding 
the blacks the region on the Grulf of Mexico.^ 
This was branded as chimerical on the ground 
that, deprived of the guidance of the whites, 
these States would soon sink to African level 
and the end of the experiment would be a recon- 
quest and a military regime fatal to the true de- 
velopment of American institutions.^ Another 
plan proposed was the revival of the old col- 
onization idea of sending Negroes to Africa, but 
this exhibited still less wisdom than the first in 
that it was based on the hypothesis of deporting 
a nation, an expense which no government 
would be willing to incur. There were then no 
physical means of transporting six or seven mil- 

1 Pike, The Prostrate State, pp. 3, 4. 

2 Spectator, LXVI, p. 113. 

147 



148 A Century of Negro Migration 

lions of people, moreover, as there would be a 
new born for every one the agents of coloniza- 
tion could deport.^ 

With the deportation scheme still kept before 
the people by the American Colonization So- 
ciety, the idea of emigration to Africa did not 
easily die. Some Negroes continued to emi- 
grate to Liberia from year to year. This policy 
was also favored by radicals like Senator Mor- 
gan, of Alabama, who, after movements like 
the Ku Klux Klan had done their work of in- 
timidating Negroes into submission to the dom- 
ination of the whites, concluded that most of the 
race believed that there was no future for the 
blacks in the United States and that they were 
willing to emigrate. These radicals advocated 
the deportation of the blacks to prevent the 
recurrence of ''Negro domination." This plan 
was acceptable to the whites in general also, 
for, unlike the consensus of opinion of today, it 
was then thought that the South could get along 
without the Negro.^ Even newspapers like the 
Charleston Neivs and Courier, which denounced 
the persecution of the Negroes, urged them to 
emigrate to Africa as they could not be per- 
mitted to rule over the white people. The Min- 
neapolis Times wished the scheme success and 

8 Frederick Douglass pointed out this difficulty prior to the 
Civil War. — See John Lobb's Life and Times of FredericTc 
Douglass, p. 250. 

* Labor was then cheap in the South because of its abundance 
and the foreign laborer had not then been tried. 



Migration of the Talented Tenth 149 

Godspeed and believed that the sooner it was 
carried out the better it would be for the 
Negroes. 

Most of the influential newspapers of the 
country, however, urged the contrary. Citing 
the progress of the Negroes since emancipation 
to show that the blacks were doing their full 
share toward developing the wealth of the 
Souths the Indianapolis Journal characterized 
as barbarism the suggestion that the govern- 
ment should furnish them transportation to 
Africa. "The ancestors of most of the Negroes 
now in this country," said the editor, " have 
doubtless been here as long as those of Senator 
Morgan, and their descendants are as thor- 
oughly acclimated and have as good a right here 
as the Senator himself. ' '^ This was the opinion 
of all useful Negroes except Bishop H. M. 
Turner, who endorsed Morgan's plan by advo- 
cating the emigration of one fourth of the 
blacks to Africa. The editor of the Chicago 
Record-Herald entreated Turner to temper his 
enthusiasm with discretion before he involved 
in unspeakable disaster any more of his trust- 
ful compatriots. 

Speaking more plainly to the point, the editor 
of the Philadelphia North American said that 
the true interest of the South was to accommo- 
date itself to changed conditions and that the 

5 During these years Senator Morgan of Alabama was en- 
deavoring to arouse the people of the country so as to make 
this a matter of national concern. 



150 A Century of Negro Migration 

duty of tlie freedmen lies in making themselves 
worth more in the development of the South 
than they were as chattels. Although recog- 
nizing the disabilities and hardships of the 
South both to the whites and the blacks, he 
could not believe that the elimination of the 
Negroes would, if practicable, give relief.^ The 
Boston Herald inquired whether it was worth 
while to send away a laboring population in the 
absence of whites to take its place and referred 
to the misfortunes of Spain which undertook to 
carry out such a scheme. Speaking the real 
tiTith, The Milwaukee Journal said that no one 
needed to expect any appreciable decrease in 
the black population through any possible emi- 
gration, no matter how successful it might be. 
''The Negro," said the editor, "is here to stay 
and our institutions must be adapted to com- 
prehend him and develop his possibilities." 
The Colored American, then the leading Negro 
organ of thought in the United States, believed 
that the Negroes should be thankful to Senator 
Morgan for his attitude on emigration, because 
he might succeed in deporting to Africa those 
Negroes who affect to believe that this is not 
their home and the more quickly we get rid of 
such foolhardy people the better it will be for 
the stalwart of the race.^ 
A number of Negroes, however, under the in- 

8 Public Opinion, XVIII, p. 371. 
7 Ibid., XVIII, p. 371. 



Migration of the Talented Tenth 151 

spiration of leaders^ like Bishop H. M. Turner, 
did not feel that the race had a fair chance in 
the United States. A few of them emigrated to 
Wapimo, Mexico; but, becoming dissatisfied 
with the situation there, they returned to their 
homes in Georgia and Alabama in 1895. The 
coming of the Negroes into Mexico caused sus- 
picion and excitement. A newspaper, El 
Tiempo, which had been denouncing lynching 
in the United States, changed front when these 
Negroes arrived in that country. 

Going in quest of new opportunities and de- 
siring to reenforce the civilization of Liberia, 
197 other Negroes sailed from Savannah, Geor- 
gia, for Liberia, March 19, 1895. Commending 
this step, the Macon Telegraph referred to their 
action as a rebellion against the social laws 
which govern all people of this country. This 
organ further said that it was the outcome of a 
feeling which has grown stronger and stronger 
year by year among the Negroes of the South- 
ern States and which will continue to grow with 
the increase of education and intelligence 
among them. The editor conceded that they had 
an opportunity to better their material condi- 
tion and acquire wealth here but contended that 
they had no chance to rise out of the peasant 
class. The Memphis Commercial Appeal urged 
the building of a large Negro nation in Africa 
as practicable and desirable, for it was ''more 

8 Simmons, Men of MarJc, p. 817. 
11 



152 A Century of Negro Migration 

and more apparent that the Negro in this coun- 
ivx must remain an alien and a disturber," be- 
cause there was ''not and can never be a future 
for him in this country." The Florida Times 
Union felt that this colonization scheme, like all 
others, was a fraud. It referred to the Negro's 
being carried to the land of plenty only to find 
out that there, as everywhere else in the world, 
an existence must be earned by toil and that his 
own old sunny southern home is vastly the bet- 
ter place.^ 

Only a few intelligent Negroes, however, had 
reached the position of being contented in the 
South. The Negroes eliminated from politics 
could not easily bring themselves around to 
thinking that they should remain there in a state 
of recognized inferiority, especially when dur- 
ing the eighties and nineties there were many 
evidences that economic as well as political con- 
ditions would become worse. The exodus 
treated in the previous chapter was productive 
of better treatment for the Negroes and an in- 
crease in their wages in certain parts of the 
South but the migration, contrary to the expec- 
tations of many, did not bcome general. Actual 
prosperity was impossible even if the whites had 
been willing to give the Negro peasants a fair 
chance. The South had passed through a dis- 
astrous war, the etfects of which so blighted the 
hopes of its citizens in the economic world that 

Public Opinion, XVIII, pp. 370-371. 



Migration of the Talented Tenth 153 

their land seemed to pass, so to speak, through 
a dark age. There was then little to give the 
man far down when the one to whom he of neces- 
sity looked for employment was in his turn bled 
by the merchant or the banker of the larger 
cities, to whom he had to go for extensive 
credits. ^^ 

Southern planters as a class, however, had not 
much sympathy for the blacks who had once 
been their property and the tendency to cheat 
them continued, despite the fact that many 
farmers in the course of time extricated them- 
selves from the clutches of the loan sharks. 
There were a few Negroes Who, thanks to the 
honesty of certain southern' gentlemen, suc- 
ceeded in acquiring considerable property in 
spite of their handicaps." They yielded to the 
white man's control in politics, when it seemed _^ 

that it meant either to abandon that field or die, IjiC/^*^^ 
and devoted themselves to the accumulation of drox^-tW-- 
wealth and the acquisition of education. 

This concession, however, did not satisfy the 
radical whites, as they thought that the Negro 
might some day return to power. Unfortu- 
nately, therefore, after the restoration of the 
control of the State governments to the master 
class, there swept over these commonwealths a 

10 Because of these conditions the last fifty years has been 
considered by some writers as a " dark age, ' ' for the South, 

11 The Negroes are now said to be worth more than a billion 
dollars. Most of this property is in the hands of southern 
Negroes. 



vT 



154 A Century of Negro Migration 

wave of hostile legislation demanded by the poor 
white uplanders determined to debase the blacks 
to the status of the free Negroes prior to the Civil 
War.^2 Tjjg Negroes have, therefore, been dis- 
franchised in most reconstructed States, de- 
prived of the privilege of serving in the State 
militia, segregated in public conveyances, and 
excluded from public places of entertainment. 
They have, moreover, been branded by public 
opinion as pariahs of society to be used for 
exploitation but not to be encouraged to expect 
that their status can ever be changed so as to 
destroy the barriers between the races in their 
social and political relations. 

This period has been marked also by an effort 
^^,-^ to establish in the South a system of peonage 

^ not unlike that of Mexico, a sort of involuntary 

V-J *. " servitude in that one is considered legally bound 

to serve his master until a debt contracted is 
paid. Such laws have been enacted in Florida, 
"* ' Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina 

"^ ^ and South Carolina. No such distinction in law 
\ has been able to stand the constitutional test of 

the United States courts as was evidenced by 
-> the decision of the Supreme Court in 1911 de- 

claring the Alabama law unconstitutional.^^ 
"• '* But the planters of the South, still a law unto 

^J themselves, have maintained actual slavery in 

^^ American Law Eeview, XL, pp. 29, 52, 205, 227, 354, 381, 
--^ 547, 590, 695, 758, 865, 905. 

13 No. 300.— Original, October Term, 1910. 



f 



Migration of the Talented Tenth 155 

sequestered districts where public opinion 
against peonage is too weak to support federal 
authorities in exterminating it.^"* The Negroes 
themselves dare not protest under penalty of 
persecution and the peon concerned usually ac- 
cepts his lot like that of a slave. Some years 
ago it was commonly reported that in trying to 
escape, the persons undertaking it often fail and 
suffer death at the hands of the planter or of 
murderous mobs, giving as their excuse, if any 
be required, that the Negro is a desperado or 
some other sort of criminal. 

Unfortunately this reaction extended also to 
education. Appropriations to public schools 
for Negroes diminished from year to year and 
when there appeared practical leaders with 
their sane plan for industrial educationithe South 
ignorantly accepted this scheme as a desirable 
subterfuge for seeming to support Negro edu- 
cation and at the same time directing the de- 
velopment of the blacks in such a way that they 
would never become the competitors of the white 
people. This was not these educators' idea 
but the South so understood it and in effecting 
the readjustment, practically left the Negroes 
out of the pale of the public school systems. 
Consequently, there has been added to the Ne- 
groes' misfortunes, in the South, that of being 
unable to obtain liberal education at public ex- 
pense, although they themselves, as the largest 

i4Hershaw, Peoimge, pp. 10-11. 



156 A Century of Negro Migration 

consumers in some parts, pay most of the taxes 
appropriated to the support of schools for the 
youth of the other race.^^ 

The South, moreover, has adopted the policy 
of a more general intimidation of the Negroes 
to keep them down. The lynching of the blacks, 
at first for assaults on white women and later 
for almost any offense, has rapidly developed 
as an institution. Within the past fifty years^^ 
there have been lynched in the South about 4,000 
Negroes, many of whom have been publicly 
burned in the daytime to attract crowds that 
usually enjoy such feats as the tourney of the 
Middle Ages. Negroes who have the courage to 
protest against this barbarism have too often 
been subjected to indignities and in some cases 
forced to leave their communities or suffer the 
fate of those in behalf of whom they speak. 
These crimes of white men were at first kept 
secret but during the last two generations the 
culprits have become known as heroes, so pop- 
ular has it been to murder Negroes. It has often 
been discovered also that the officers of these 
communities take part in these crimes and the 
worst of all is that politicians like Tillman, 
Blease and Vardaman glory in recounting the 
noble deeds of those who deserve so well of their 
countrymen for making the soil red with the Ne- 

15 These facts are well brought out by Dr. Thomas Jesse 
Jones' recent report on Negro Education. 

10 This is based on reports published annually in the Chicago 
Tribune. 



Migration of the Talented Tenth 157 

groes ' blood rather than permit the much feared 
Africanization of southern institutions.^'^ 

In this harassing situation the Negro has 
hoped that the North would interfere in his be- 
half, but, with the reactionary Supreme Court ■i.»,-«i 
of the United States interpreting this hostile <^ 

legislation as constitutional in conformity with -^ cLa^ji,^ : ■ 
the demands of prejudiced public opinion, and 
with the leaders of the North inclined to take 
the view that after all the factions in the South 
must be left alone to fight it out, there has been 
nothing to be expected from without. Matters 
too have been rendered much worse because the 
leaders of the very party recently abandoning 
the freedmen to their fate, aggravated the crit- 
ical situation by first setting the Negroes 
against their former masters, whom they were 
taught to regard as their worst enemies whether 
they were or not. 

The last humiliation the Negroes have been 
forced to submit to is that of segregation. Here 
the effort has been to establish a ghetto in cities 
and to assign certain parts of the country to Ne- 
groes engaged in farming. It always happens, 
of course, that the best portion goes to the 
whites and the least desirable to the blacks, al- 
though the promoters of the segregation main- 
tain that both races are to be treated equally. 
The ultimate aim is to prevent the Negroes of 
means from figuring conspicuously in aristo- 

17 This is the boast of southern men of this type when speak- 
ing to their constituents or in Congress. 



158 A Century of Negro Migration 

cratic districts where they may be brought into 
rather close contact with the whites. Negroes 
see in segregation a settled policy to keep them 
down, no matter what they do to elevate them- 
selves. The southern white man, eternally 
dreading the miscegenation of the races, makes 
the life, liberty and happiness of individuals 
second to measures considered necessary to pre- 
vent this so-called evil that this enviable civili- 
zation, distinctly American, may not be de- 
stroyed. The United States Supreme Court in 
the decision of the Louisville segregation case 
recently declared these segregation measures 
unconstitutional.^^ 

These restrictions have made the progress of 
the Negroes more of a problem in that directed 
toward social distinction, the Negroes have been 
denied the helpful contact of the sympathetic 
whites. The increasing race prejudice forces 
the whites to restrict their open dealing with 
the blacks to matters of service and business, 
maintaining even then the bearing of one in a 
sphere which the Negroes must not penetrate. 
The whites, therefore, never seeing the blacks as 
they are, and the blacks never being able to 
learn what the whites know, are thrown back on 
their own initiative, which their life as slaves 
could not have permitted to develop. It makes 
little difference that the Negroes have been free 
a few decades. Such freedom has in some parts 

18 Report, October Term, 1917. 



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Migration of the Talented Tenth 159 

been tantamount to slavery, and so far as con- 
tact with the superior class is concerned, no 
better than that condition; for under the old 
regime certain slaves did learn much by close 
association with their masters.^^ 

For these reasons there has been since the 
exodus to the West a steady migration of Ne- 
groes from the South to points in the North. 
But this migration, mainly due to political 
changes, has never assumed such large propor- 
tions as in the case of the more significant move- 
ments due to economic causes, for, as the ac- 
companying map shows, most Negroes are still 
in the South. When we consider the various 
classes migrating, however, it will be apparent 
that to understand the exodus of the Negroes 
to the North, this longer drawn out and smaller 
movement must be carefully studied in all its 
ramifications. It should be noted that unlike 
some of the other migrations it has not been 
directed to any particular State, It has been 
from almost all Southern States to various 
parts of the North and especially to the largest 

cities.^^ 

What classes then have migrated! In the 
first place, the Negro politicians, who, after the 
restoration of Bourbon rule in the South, found 
themselves thrown out of office and often humil- 

19 This danger has been often referred to when the Negroes 
were first enoancipated. — See Spectator, LXVI^ p. 113. 

20 Compare the Negro population of Northern States as given 
in the census of 1800 with the same in 1900. 



160 i Century of Negro Migration 

iated and impoverished, had to find some way 
out of the difficulty. Some few have been re- 
lieved by sympathetic leaders of the Republican 
party, who secured for them federal appoint- 
ments in Washington. These appointments 
when sometimes paying lucrative salaries have 
been given as a reward to those Negroes who, 
although dethroned in the South, remain in 
touch with the remnant of the Republican party 
there and control the delegates to the national 
conventions nominating candidates for Presi- 
dent. Many Negroes of this class have settled 
in Washington.-^ In some cases, the observer 
witnesses the pitiable scene of a man once a 
prominent public functionary in the South now 
serving in Washington as a messenger or a 
clerk. 

The well-established blacks, however, have 
not been so easily induced to go. The Negroes 
in business in the South have usually been loath 
to leave their people among whom they can ac- 
quire property, whereas, if they go to the North, 
they have merely political freedom with no as- 
surance of an opportunity in the economic 
world. But not a few of these have given them- 
selves up to unrelenting toil with a view to ac- 
cumulating sufficient wealth to move North and 
live thereafter on the income from their invest- 
ments. Many of this class now spend some of 
their time in the North to educate their children. 

21 Hart, Southern South, pp. 171, 172. 



Migration of the Talented Tenth 161 

But they do not like to have these children who 
have been under refining influences return to 
the South to suffer the humiliation which during 
the last generation has been growing more and 
more aggravating. Endeavoring to carry out 
their policy of keeping the Negro down, south- 
erners too often carefully plan to humiliate the 
progressive and intelligent blacks and in some 
cases form mobs to drive them out, as they are 
bad examples for that class of Negroes whom 
they desire to keep as menials.^^ 

There are also the migrating educated Ne- 
groes. They have studied history, law and eco- 
nomics and well understand what it is to get the 
rights guaranteed them by the constitution. The 
more they know the more discontented they be- 
come. They cannot speak out for what they 
want. No one is likely to second such a protest, 
not even the Negroes themselves, so generally 
have they been intimidated. The more out- 
spoken they become, moreover, the more neces- 
sary is it for them to leave, for they thereby de- 
stroy their chances to earn a livelihood. White 
men in control of the public schools of the South 
see to it that the subserviency of the Negro 
teachers employed be certified beforehand. 
They dare not complain too much about equip- 
ment and salaries even if the per capita appro- 

22 This is based on the experience of the writer and others 
whom he has interviewed. 



162 A Century of Negro Migration 

priation for the education of the Negroes be one 
fourth of that for the whites.^^ 

In the higher institutions of learning, espe- 
cially the State schools, it is exceptional to find 
a principal who has the confidence of the Ne- 
groes. The Negroes will openly assert that he 
is in the pay of the reactionary whites, whose 
purpose is to keep the Negro down; and the 
incumbent himself will tell his board of regents 
how much he is opposed by the Negroes because 
he labors for the interests of the white race. 
Out of such sycophancy it is easily explained 
why our State schools have been so inetfective 
as to necessitate the sending of the Negro youth 
to private institutions maintained by northern 
philanthropy. Yet if an outspoken Negro 
happens to be an instructor in a private school 
conducted by educators from the North, he has to 
be careful about contending for a square deal; 
for, if the head of his institution does not sug- 
gest to him to proceed conservatively, the mob 
will dispose of the complainant.^^ Physicians, 
lawyers and preachers who are not so economic- 
ally dependent as teachers can exercise no more 
freedom of speech in the midst of this tri- 
umphant rule of the lawless. 

A large number of educated Negroes, there- 
fore, have on account of these conditions been 

28 In his report on Negro education Dr. Tliomas Jesse Jones 
has shown this to be an actual fact. 

23 Negroes applying for positions in the South have the situa- 
tion set before them so as to know what to expect. 



Diagram Showing the Negro Population of Northern and 

Western Cities in 1900 and the Extent to which it 

increased by 1910. 

Thousands 
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 

Atlantic City 

Boston 

Cambridge 

Camden 

Chicago 

Cincinnati 

Cleveland 

Columbus 

Des Moines U I 1 1 il I ' 1 1910 

Detroit 
Harrisburg 

Indianapolis 
Jersey City 
Kansas City, Kan 
Kansas City, Mo. 
Minneapolis 
New York 
Omaha 
Philadelphia 
Pittsburg 
Providence 
Seattle 
St. Louis 























1 










t 


















































J 














D 








































1 




















JHHJ 1 


























1_1 1 








































c 
























































] 








































L_ 














1 






■ 














































k 














k 













Migration of the Talented Tenth 163 

compelled to leave the South. Finding in the 
North, however, practically nothing in their 
line to do, because of the proscription by race 
prejudice and trades unions, many of them 
lead the life of menials, serving as waiters, 
porters, butlers and chauffeurs. While in 
Chicago, not long ago, the writer was in the 
office of a graduate of a colored southern col- 
lege, who was showing his former teacher the 
picture of his class. In accounting for his 
classmates in the various walks of life, he re- 
ported that more than one third of them were 
settled to the occupation of Pullman porters. 

The largest number of Negroes who have 
gone North during this period, however, belong 
to the intelligent laboring class. Some of them 
have become discontemed for the very same 
reasons that the higher classes have tired of op- 
pression in the South, but the larger number of 
them have gone North to improve their eco- 
nomic condition. Most of these have migrated 
to the large cities in the East and Northwest, 
such as Philadelphia, New York, Indianapolis, 
Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit and 
Chicago. To understand this problem in its 
urban aspects the accompanying diagram show- 
ing the increase in the Negro population of 
northern cities during the first decade of this 
century will be helpful. 

Some of these Negroes have migrated after 
careful consideration; others have just hap- 

12 



164 A Century of Negro Migration 

pened to go north as wanderers; and a still 
larger number on the many excursions to the 
cities conducted by railroads during the summer 
mouths. Sometimes one excursion brings to 
Chicago two or three thousand Negroes, two 
thirds of whom never go back. They do not 
often follow the higher pursuits of labor in the 
North but they earn more money than they have 
been accustomed to earn in the South. They 
are attracted also by the liberal attitude of some 
whites, which, although not that of social 
equality, gives the Negroes a liberty in northern 
centers which leads them to think that they are 
citizens of the country.^^ 

This shifting in the population has had an 
unusually significant effect on the black belt. 
Frederick Douglass advised the Negroes in 
1879 to remain in the South where they would be 
in sufficiently large numbers to have political 
power,2^ but they have gradually scattered 
from the black belt so as to diminish greatly 
their chances ever to become the political force 
they formerly were in this country. The Ne- 
groes once had this possibility in South Caro- 
lina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisi- 
ana and, had the process of Africanization 
prior to the Civil War had a few decades longer 
to do its work, there would not have been any 
doubt as to the ultimate preponderance of the 

24 The American Journal of Political Economy, XXV, p. 1040. 

25 The Journal of Social Science, XIj p. 16. 



I 



Counties in the Southern States having at 

1 9 1 O 



~1 



l- 



T 



■-M' 
I 



1\ ^—^■AV./ 







18 8 







y^~Ji 50 TO 75 PER CENT HW 75 PER CENT AND OVER 

(Maps 3 niid 4, Bullotin 129, U. S. T^nrenn of the Census.) 



LEAST 50 Per Cent of their Population Negro. 



1 <> o <» 




1 § «o 






1 \ J \ H^^ 



i 
i 
I 



a 






s 



■vV ■^. 



s 



-^ id) \ ?^-'^ 



V. 




Igrr j 50 TO 75 PER CENT ^M 75 PER CENT AND OVER 

(Maps 5 and 6, Bulletin 129, IT. S. Bureau of the Census.) 



Migration of the Talented Tenth 165 

Negroes in those commonwealtlis. The tend- 
encies of the black population according to the 
censuses of the United States and especially 
that of 1910, however, show that the chances for 
the control of these State governments by Ne- 
groes no longer exist except in South Carolina 
and Mississippi.-*^ It has been predicted, there- 
fore, that, if the same tendencies continue for 
the next fifty years, there will be even few coun- 
ties in which the Negroes will be -in a majority. 
All of the Southern States except Arkansas 
showed a proportionate increase of the white 
population over that of the black between 1900 
and 1910, while West Virginia and Oklahoma 
with relatively small numbers of blacks showed, 
for reasons stated elsewhere, an increase in the 
Negro population. Thus we see coming to pass 
something like the proposed plan of Jefferson 
and othe:- statesmen who a hundred years ago 
advocated the expansion of slavery to lessen 
the evil of the institution by distributing its 
burdens.^'^ 

The migration of intelligent blacks, however, 
has been attended with several handicaps to the 
race. The large part of the black population 
is in the South and there it will stay for decades 
to come. The southern Negroes, therefore, have 
been robbed of their due part of the talented 
tenth. The educated blacks have had no con- 

26 American Economic Beview, IV, pp. 281-292. 

27 Ford edition of Jeferson's Writings, X, p. 231. 



166 A Century of Negro Migration 

stituency in the North and, consequently, have 
been unable to realize their sweetest dreams of 
the land of the free. In their new home the 
enlightened Negro must live with his light under 
a bushel. Those left behind in the South soon 
despair of seeing a brighter day and yield to the 
yoke. In the places of the leaders who were 
wont to speak for their people, the whites have 
raised up Negroes who accept favors offered 
them on the condition that their lips be sealed 
up forever on the rights of the Negro. 

This emigration too has left the Negro sub- 
ject to other evils. There are many first-class 
Negro business men in the South, but although 
there were once progressive men of color, who 
endeavored to protect the blacks from being 
plundered by white sharks and harpies there 
have arisen numerous unscrupulous Negroes 
who have for a part of the proceeds from such 
jobbery associated themselves with ill-designing 
white men to dupe illiterate Negroes. This 
trickery is brought into play in marketing their 
crops, selling them supplies, or purchasing their 
property. To carry out this iniquitous plan the 
persons concerned have the protection of the 
law, for while Negroes in general are imposed 
upon, those engaged in robbing them have no 
cause to fear. 



i 



CHAPTER IX 

THE EXODUS DUEING THE WORLD WAR 



WITHIN the last two years there has been a 
steady stream of Negroes into the North 
in such large numbers as to overshadow in its 
results all other movements of the kind in the 
United States. These Negroes have come 
largely from Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, 
Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, 
South Carolina, Arkansas and Mississippi. The 
given causes of this migration are numerous and 
complicated. Some untruths centering around 
this exodus have not been unlike those of other 
migrations. Again we hear that the Negroes 
are being brought North to fight organized 
labor,^ and to carry doubtful States for the 
Republicans.^ These numerous explanations 
themselves, however, give rise to doubt as to the 
fundamental cause. 

Why then should the Negroes leave the South! 
It has often been spoken of as the best place for 
them. There, it is said, they have made unusual 
strides forward. The progress of the Negroes 
in the South, however, has in no sense been gen- 
eral, although the land owned by Negroes in the 

1 New York Times, Sept. 5, 9, 28, 1916. 

2 Ibid., Oct. 18, 28; Nov. 5, 7, 12, 15 j Dec. 4, 9, 1916. 

167 



168 A Century of Negro Migration 

country and tlie property of thrifty persons of 
their race in urban communities may be exten- 
sive, fn most parts of the South the Negroes 
are still unable to become landowners or suc- 
cessful business men. Conditions and customs 
have reserved these spheres for the whites. 
Generally speaking, the Negroes are still de- 
pendent on the white people for food and 
shelter. Although not exactly slaves, they are 
yet attached to the white people as tenants, 
servants or dependents. Accepting this as their 
lot, they have been content to wear their lord's 
cast-off clothing, and live in his ramshackled 
barn or cellar. In this unhappy state so many 
have settled dowii, losing all ambition to attain 
a higher station.! The world has gone on but 
in their sequestered sphere progress has passed 
them by. 

What then is the cause? There have been 
bulldozing, terrorism, maltreatment and what 
not of persecution ; but the Negroes have not in 
large numbers wandered away from the land of 
their birth. What the migrants themselves 
think about it, goes to the very heart of the 
trouble. Some say that they left the South on 
account of injustice in the courts, unrest, lack 
of privileges, denial of the right to vote, bad 
treatment, oppression, segregation or lynching. 
Others say that they left to find employment, to 
secure better wages, better school facilities, and 

8 The New Orleans Times Picayune, Marcli 26, 1914. 



I 



Exodus during the World War 169 

better opportunities to toil upward.^ Soutliern 
white newspapers unaccustomed to give tlie Ne- 
groes any mention but that of criminals have 
said that the Negroes are going North because 
they have not had a fair chance in the South 
and that if they are to be retained there, the at- 
titude of the whites toward them must be 
changed. | Professor William 0. Scroggs, of 
Louisiana State University, considers as causes 
of this exodus "the relatively low wages paid 
farm labor, an unsatisfactory tenant or crop- 
sharing system, the boll weevil, the crop failure 
of 1916, lynching, disfranchisement, segrega- 
tion, poor schools, and the monotony, isolation 
and drudgery of farm life." Professor 
Scroggs, however, is wrong in thinking that 
the persecution of the blacks has little to do 
with the migration for the reason that during 
these years when the treatment of the Negroes 
is decidedly better they are leaving the South./ 
This does not mean that they would not have 
left before, if they had had economic opportuni- 
ties in the North, fit is highly probable that the 
Negroes would not be leaving the South today, 
if they were treated as men, although there 
might be numerous opportunities for economic 
improvement in the North.^*^ / 

The immediate cause of this movement was 
the suffering due to the floods aggravated by 

9 The Crisis, July, 1917. 

T^o American Journal of Political Economy, XXX, p. 1040. 



170 A Century of Negro Migration 

the depredationsi of the boll weevil. Although 
generally mindful of our welfare, the United 
States Government has not been as ready to 
build levees against a natural enemy to prop- 
erty as it has been to provide fortifications for 
warfare. It has been necessary for local com- 
munities and State governments to tax them- 
selves to maintain them. The national govern- 
ment, however, has appropriated to the purpose 
of facilitating inland navigation certain sums 
which have been used in doing this work, espe- 
cially in the Mississippi Valley. There are now 
1,538 miles of levees on both sides of the Mis- 
sissippi from Cape Girardeau to the passes. 
These levees, of course, are still inadequate to 
the security of the planters against these inun- 
dations. Carrying 406 million tons of mud a 
year, the river becomes a dangerous stream sub- 
ject to change, abandoning its old bed to cut for 
itself a new channel, transferring property from 
one State to another, isolating cities and leaving 
once useful levees marooned in the landscape 
like old Indian mounds or overgrown intrench- 
ments.3 

This valley has, therefore, been frequently 
visited with disasters which have often set the 
population in motion. The first disastrous 
floods came in 1858 and 1859, breaking many of 
the levees, the destruction of which was prac- 
tically completed by the floods of 1865 and 1869. 
There is an annual rise in the stream, but since 

'The World's WorTc, XX, p. 271. 



Exodus during the World War 171 

1874 this river system has fourteen times de- 
vastated large areas of this section with de- 
structive floods. The property in this district 
depreciated in value to the extent of about 400 
millions in ten years. Farmers from this sec- 
tion, therefore, have at times moved west with 
foreigners to take up public lands. 

The other disturbing factor in this situation 
was the boll weevil, an interloper from Mexico 
in 1892. The boll weevil is an insect about one 
fourth of an inch in length, varying from one 
eighth to one third of an inch with a breadth of 
about one third of the length. When it first 
emerges it is yellowish, then becomes gray- 
ish brown and finally assumes a black shade. 
It breeds on no other plant than cotton and 
feeds on the boll. This little animal, at first 
attacked the cotton crop in Texas. It was not 
thought that it would extend its work into the 
heart of the South so as to become of national 
consequence, but it has, at the rate of forty to 
one hundred sixty miles annually, invaded all 
of the cotton district except that of the Caro- 
linas and Virginia. The damage it does, varies 
according to the rainfall and the harshness of 
the winter, increasing with the former and de- 
creasing with the latter. At times the damage 
has been to the extent of a loss of 50 per cent, 
of the crop, estimated at 400,000 bales of cotton 
annually, about 4,500,000 bales since the inva- 
sion or $250,000,000 worth of cotton." The out- 

*The World's WorTc, XX, p. 272. 



172 A Century of Negro Migration 

put of tlie South being thus cut off, the planter 
has less income to provide supplies for his black 
tenants and, the prospects for future production 
being dark, merchants accustomed to give them 
credit have to refuse. This, of course, means 
financial depression, for the South is a borrow- 
ing section and any limitation to credit there 
blocks the wheels of industry. It was fortunate 
for the Negro laborers in this district that there 
was then a demand for labor in the North when 
this condition began to obtain. 

This demand was made possible by the cut- 
ting off of European immigration by the World 
War, which thereby rendered this hitherto un- 
congenial section an inviting field for the Negro. 
The Negroes have made some progress in the 
North during the last fifty years, but despite 
their achievements they have been so handi- 
capped by race prejudice and proscribed by 
trades unions that the uplift of the race by eco- 
nomic methods has been impossible. The Euro- 
pean immigrants have hitherto excluded the Ne- 
groes even from the menial positions. In the 
midst of the drudgery left for them, the blacks 
have often heretofore been debased to the status 
of dependents and paupers. Scattered through 
the North too in such small numbers, they have 
been unable to unite for social betterment and 
mutual improvement and naturally too weak 
to force the community to respect their wishes 
as could be done by a large group with some 



Exodus during the World War 173 

political or economic power. At present, how- 
ever, Negro laborers, wlio once went from city 
to city, seeking such employment as trades 
unions left to them, can work even as skilled 
laborers throughout the North.^ Women of 
color formerly excluded from domestic service 
by foreign maids are now in demand. Many 
mills and factories which Negroes were pro- 
hibited from entering a few years ago are now 
bidding for their labor. Railroads cannot find 
help to teep their property in repair, con- 
tractors fall short of their plans for failure to 
hold mechanics drawn into the industrial boom 
and the United States Government has had to 
advertise for men to hasten the preparation for 
war. 

Men from afar went south to tell the Negroes 
of a way of escape to a more congenial place. 
Blacks long since unaccustomed to venture a 
few miles from home, at once had visions of a 
promised land just a few hundred miles away. 
Some were told of the chance to amass fabulous 
riches, some of the opportunities for education 
and some of the hospitality of the places of 
amusement and recreation in the North. The 
migrants then were soon on the way. Railway 
stations became conspicuous with the presence 
of Negro tourists, the trains were crowded to 
full capacity and the streets of northern cities 

5 New York Times, Marcli 29, April 7, 9, May 30 and 31, 
1917. 



174 A Century of Negro Migration 

were soon congested with black laborers seeking 
to realize their dreams in the land of unusual 
opportunity. 

Employment agencies, recently multiplied to 
meet the demand for labor, find themselves un- 
able to cope with the situation and agents sent 
into the South to induce the blacks by offers of 
free transportation and high wages to go north, 
have found it impossible to supply the demand 
in centers where once toiled the Poles, Italians 
and the Greeks formerly preferred to the Ne- 
groes.^ In other words, the present migration 
differs from others in that the Negro has op- 
portunity awaiting him in the North whereas 
formerly it was necessary for him to make a 
place for himself upon arriving among enemies. 
The proportion of those returning to the South, 
therefore, will be inconsiderable. 

Becoming alarmed at the immensity of this 
movement the South has undertaken to check it. 
To frighten Negroes from the North southern 
newspapers are carefully circulating reports 
that many of them are returning to their native 
land because of unexpected hardships."^ But 
having failed in this, southerners have com- 
pelled employment agents to cease operations 
there, arrested suspected employers and, to pre- 

6 Survey, XXXVII, pp. 569-571 and XXXVIII, pp. 27, 226, 
331, 428; Forum, LVII, p. 181; The World's Work, XXXIV, 
pp. 135, 314-319; OutlooJc, CXVI, pp. 520-521; Independent, 
XCI, pp. 53-54. 

7 The Crisis, 1917. 



Exodus during the World War 175 

vent tlie departure of tlie Negroes, imprisoned 
on false charges those who appear at stations to 
leave for the North. This procedure could not 
long be effective, for by the more legal and clan- 
destine methods of railway passenger agents the 
work has gone forward. Some southern com- 
munities have, therefore, advocated drastic 
legislation against labor agents, as was sug- 
gested in Louisiana in 1914, when by operation 
of the Underwood Tariff Law the Negroes 
thrown out of employment in the sugar district 
migrated to the cotton plantations.^ 

One should not, however, get the impression 
that the majority of the Negroes are leaving 
the South. Eager as these Negroes seem to go, 
there is no unanimity of opinion as to whether 
migration is the best policy. The sycophant, 
toady class of Negroes naturally advise the 
blacks to remain in the South to serve their 
white neighbors. The radical protagonists of 
the equal-rights-for-all element urge them to 
come North by all means. Then there are the 
thinking Negroes, who are still further divided. 
Both divisions of this element have the interests 
of the race at heart, but they are unable to agree 
as to exactly what the blacks should now do. 
Thinking that the present war will soon be over 
and that consequently the immigration of for- 
eigners into this country will again set in and 
force out of employment thousands of Negroes 
who have migrated to the North, some of the 



176 A Century of Negro Migration 

most representative Negroes are advising their 
fellows to remain where they are. The most 
serious objection to this transplantation is that it 
means for the Negroes a loss of land, the rapid 
acquisition of which has long been pointed to as 
the best evidence of the ability of the blacks 
to rise in the economic world. So many Ne- 
groes who have by dint of energy purchased 
small farms yielding an increasing income from 
year to year, are now disposing of them at 
nominal prices to come north to work for wages. 
Looking beyond the war, however, and thinking 
too that the depopulation of Europe during this 
upheaval will render immigration from that 
quarter for some years an impossibility, other 
thinkers urge the Negroes to continue the mi- 
gration to the North, where the race may be 
found in sufficiently large numbers to wield eco- 
nomic and political power. 

Great as is the dearth of labor in the South, 
moreover, the Negro exodus has not as yet 
caused such a depression as to unite the whites 
in inducing the blacks to remain in that section. 
In the first place, the South has not yet felt the 
worst effects of this economic upheaval as that 
part of the country has been unusually aided by 
the millions which the United States Govern- 
ment is daily spending there. Furthermore, the 
poor whites are anxious to see the exodus of 
their competitors in the field of labor. This 
leaves the capitalists at their mercy, and in 



Exodus during the World War 177 

keeping with their domineering attitude, they 
will be able to handle the labor situation as they 
desire. As an evidence of this fact we need but 
note the continuation of mob rule and lynching 
in the South despite the preachings against it 
of the organs of thought which heretofore 
winked at it. 'This terrorism has gone to an un- 
expected extent. Negro farmers have been 
threatened with bodily injury, unless they leave 
certain parts. 

The southerner of aristocratic bearing will 
say that only the shiftless poor whites terrorize 
the Negroes. This may be so, but the truth 
offers little consolation when we observe that 
most white people in the South are of this class; 
and the tendency of this element to put their 
children to work before they secure much educa- 
tion does not indicate that the South will soon 
experience that general enlightenment neces- 
sary to exterminate these survivals of barbar- 
ism. Unless the upper classes of the whites 
can bring the mob around to their way of 
thinking that the persecution of the Negro is 
prejudicial to the interests of all, it is not likely 
that mob rule will soon cease and the migration 
to this extent will be promoted rather than re- 
tarded. 

It is unfortunate for the South that the grow- 
ing consciousness of the Negroes has culminated 
at the very time they are m'ost needed. Finally 
heeding the advice of agricultural experts to re- 



1^' 



178 A Century of Negro Migration 

construct its agricultural system, tlie South has 
learned in the school of bitter experience to de- 
part from the plan of producing the single cot- 
ton crop. It is now raising food-stuffs to make 
that section self-supporting without reducing 
the usual output of cotton. With the increasing 
production in the South, therefore, more labor 
is needed just at the very time it is being drawn 
to centers in the North. The North being an in- 
dustrial and commercial section has usually at- 
tracted the immigrants, who will never fit into 
the economic situation in the South because 
they will not accept the treatment given Ne- 
groes. The South, therefore, is now losing the 
only labor which it can ever use under present 
conditions. 

Where these Negroes are going is still more 
interesting. The exodus to the west was mainly 
directed to Kansas and neighboring States, the 
migration to the Southwest centered in Okla- 
homa and Texas, pioneering Negro laborers 
drifted into the industrial district of the Ap- 
palachian highland during the eighties and nine- 
ties and the infiltration of the discontented tal- 
ented tenth affected largely the cities of the 
North. But now we are told that at the very 
time the mining districts of the North and West 
are being filled with blacks the western planters 
are supplying their farms with them and that 
into some cities have gone sufficient skilled and 
unskilled Negro workers to increase the black 



Exodus during the World War 179 

population more than one hundred per cent. 
Places in the North, where the black population 
has not only not increased but even decreased in 
recent years, are now receiving a steady influx 
of Negroes/ In fact, this is a nation-wide mi- 
gration affecting all parts and all conditions. 

Students of social problems are now wonder- 
ing whether the Negro can be adjusted in the 
North. Many perplexing problems must arise. 
This movement will produce results not unlike 
those already mentioned in the discussion of 
other migrations, some of which we have evi- 
dence of today. There will be an increase in 
race prejudice leading in some communities to 
actual outbreaks as in Chester and Youngstown 
and probably to massacres like that of East St. 
Louis, in which participated not only well- 
known citizens but the local officers and the State 
militia. The Negroes in the North are in com- 
petition with white men who consider them not 
only strike breakers but a sort of inferior indi- 
viduals unworthy of the consideration which 
white men deserve. And this condition obtains 
even where Negroes have been admitted to the 
trades unions. 

Negroes in seeking new homes in the North, 
moreover, invade residential districts hitherto 
exclusively white. There they encounter prej- 
udice and persecution until most whites thus 
disturbed move out determined to do whatever 
they can to prevent their race from suffering 

13 



180 A Century of Negro Migration 

from further depreciation of property and the 
disturbance of their community life. Lawless- 
ness has followed, showing that violence may 
under certain conditions develop among some 
classes anywhere rather than reserve itself for 
vigilance committees of primitive communities. 
It has brought out too another aspect of lawless- 
ness in that it breaks out in the North where 
the numbers of Negroes are still too small to 
serve as an excuse for the terrorism and lynch- 
ing considered necessary in the South to keep 
the Negroes down. 

The maltreatment of the Negroes will be na- 
tionalized by this exodus. The poor whites of 
both sections will strike at this race long stig- 
matized by servitude but now demanding eco- 
nomic equality. Eace prejudice, the fatal weak- 
j ness of the Americans, will not so soon abate 
although there will be advocates of fraternity, 
equality and liberty required to reconstruct our 
government and rebuild our civilization in con- 
formity with the demands of modern efficiency 
by placing every man regardless of his color 
wherever he may do the greatest good for the 
greatest number. 

The Negroes, however, are doubtless going to 
the North in sufficiently large numbers to make 
themselves felt. If this migration falls short of 
establishing in that section Negro colonies large 
enough to wield economic and political power, 
their state in the end will not be any better than 



Exodus during the World War 181 

that of the Negroes already there. It is to these 
large numbers alone that we must look for an 
agent to counteract the development of race 
feeling into riots. In large numbers the blacks 
will be able to strike for better wages or con- 
cessions due a rising laboring class and they 
will have enough votes to defeat for reelection 
those officers who wink at mob violence or treat 
Negroes as persons beyond the pale of the law. 

The Negroes in the North, however, will get 
little out of the harvest if, like the blacks of Re- 
construction days, they unwisely concentrate 
their efforts on solving all of their problems by 
electing men of their race as local officers or by 
sending a few members even to Congress as is 
likely in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago 
within the next generation. The Negroes have 
had representatives in Congress before but they 
were put out because their constituency was un- 
economic and politically impossible. There was 
nothing but the mere letter of the law behind 
the Eeconstruction Negro officeholder and the 
thus forced political recognition against public 
opinion could not last any longer than natural 
forces for some time thrown out of gear by un- 
natural causes could resume the usual line of 
procedure. 

It would be of no advantage to the Negro race 
today to send to Congress forty Negro Repre- 
sentatives on the pro rata basis of numbers, 
especially if they happened not to be exception- 



182 A Century of Negro Migration 

ally well qualified. They would remain in Con- 
gress only so long as the American white people 
could devise some plan for eliminating them as 
they did during the Reconstruction period. 
Near as the world has approached real democ- 
racy, history gives no record of a permanent 
government conducted on this basis. Interests 
have always been stronger than numbers. The 
Negroes in the North, therefore, should not on 
the eve of the economic revolution follow the 
advice of their misguided and misleading race 
leaders who are diverting their attention from 
their actual welfare to a specialization in pol- 
itics. To concentrate their efforts on electing a 
few Negroes to office wherever the blacks are 
found in the majority, would exhibit the nar- 
rowness of their oppressors. It would be as un- 
wise as the policy of the Republican party of 
setting aside a few insignificant positions like 
that of Recorder of Deeds, Register of the 
Treasury and Auditor of the Navy as segre- 
gated jobs for Negroes. Such positions have 
furnished a nucleus for the large, worthless, 
office-seeking class of Negroes in Washington, 
who have established the going of the people of 
the city toward pretence and sham. 

The Negroes should support representative 
men of any color or party, if they stand for a 
square deal and equal rights for all. The new 
Negroes in the North, therefore, will, as so 
many of their race in New York, Philadelphia 



Exodus during the World War 183 

and Chicago are now doing, ally themselves 
with those men who are fairminded and consid- 
erate of the man far down, and seek to embrace 
their many opportunities for economic progress, 
a foundation for political recognition, upon 
which the race must learn to build. Every race 
in the universe must aspire to becoming a factor 
in politics; but history shows that there is no 
short route to such success. Like other despised 
races beset with the prejudice and militant op- 
position of self-styled superiors, the Negroes 
must increase their industrial efficiency, improve 
their opportunities to make a living, develop the 
home, church and school, and contribute to art, 
literature, science and philosophy to clear the 
way to that political freedom of which they 
cannot be deprived. 

The entire country will be benefited by this 
upheaval. It will be helpful even to the South. 
The decrease in the black population in those 
communities where the Negroes outnumber the 
whites will remove the fear of Negro domina- 
tion, one of the causes of the backwardness of 
the South and its peculiar civilization. Many 
of the expensive precautions which the southern 
people have taken to keep the Negroes down, 
much of the terrorism incited to restrain the 
blacks from self-assertion will no longer be con- 
sidered necessary ; for, ha\Hng the excess in num- 
bers on their side, the whites will finally rest as- 
sured that the Negroes may be encouraged with- 



184 A Century of Negro Migration 

out any apprehension that they may develop 
enough power to subjugate or embarrass their 
former masters. 

The Negroes too are very much in demand in 
the South and the intelligent whites will gladly 
give them larger opportunities to attach them to 
that section, knowing that the blacks, once con- 
scious of their power to move freely throughout 
the country wherever they may improve their 
condition, will never endure hardships like those 
formerly inflicted upon the race. The South is 
already learning that the Negro is the most de- 
sirable laborer for that section, that the perse- 
cution of Negroes not only drives them out but 
makes the employment of labor such a problem 
that the South will not be an attractive section 
for capital. It will, therefore, be considered 
the duty of business men to secure protection 
to the Negroes lest their ill-treatment force them 
to migrate to the extent of bringing about a 
stagnation of their business. 

The exodus has driven home the truth that the 
prosperity of the South is at the mercy of the 
Negro. Dependent on cheap labor, which the 
bulldozing whites will not readily furnish, the 
wealthy southerners must finally reach the posi- 
tion of regarding themselves and the Negroes 
as having a community of interests which 
each must promote. ''Nature itself in those 
States," Douglass said, "came to the rescue of 
the Negro. He had labor, the South wanted it, 



Exodus during the World War 185 

and must have it or perisli. Since lie was free 
he could then give it, or withhold it ; use it where 
he was, or take it elsewhere, as he pleased. His 
labor made hinj a slave and his labor could, if 
he would, make him free, comfortable and inde- 
pendent. It is more to him than either fire, 
sword, ballot boxes or bayonets. It touches the 
heart of the South through its pocket. "^^ 
Knowing that the Negro has this silent weapon 
to be used against his employer or the commu- 
nity, the South is already giving the race better 
educational facilities, better railway accommo- 
dations, and will eventually, if the advocacy of 
certain southern newspapers be heeded, grant 
them political privileges. Wages in the South, 
therefore, have risen even in the extreme south- 
western States, where there is an opportunity to 
import Mexican labor. Reduced to this ex- 
tremity, the southern aristocrats have begun to 
lose some of their race prejudice, which has not 
hitherto yielded to reason or philanthropy. 

S outhern m en_are^ telling their neighbors that 
their section must abandon the policy of treat- 
ing the Negroes as a problem and construct a 
prograrfTTor recognTHiSrratEerlEan f ofTepres- 
sionT Meetings"~afer therefore, being held to 
fiJQd out" what theTNe gro wants and wha^may be 
done t o keep th em contented^ They are told that 
the Negro must be elevated not exploited, that 
to make the South what it must needs be, the co- 

11 American Journal of Social Science, XI, p. 4. 



186 A Century of Negro Migration 

operation of all is needed to train and equip the 
men of all races for efficiency. The aim of all 
then must be to reform or get rid of the unfair 
proprietors who do not give their tenants a fair 
division of the returns from their labor. To 
this end the best whites and blacks are urged to 
come together to find a working basis for a sys- 
tematic effort in the interest of all. 

To say that either the North or the South can 
easily become adjusted to this change is entirely 
i too sanguine. The North will have a problem. 
1 The Negroes in the northern city will have much 
j more to contend with than when settled in the 
j rural districts or small urban centers. Forced 
• by restrictions of real estate men into congested 
districts, there has appeared the tendency to- 
ward further segregation. They are denied so- 
cial contact, are sagaciously separated from 
the whites in public places of amusement and 
are clandestinely segregated in public schools 
in spite of the law to the contrary. As a con- 
sequence the Negro migrant often finds him- 
self with less friends than he formerly had. The 
northern man who once denounced the South on 
account of its maltreatment of the blacks grad- 
ually grows silent when a Negro is brought next 
door. There comes with the movement, there- 
fore, the difficult problem of housing. 

"Where then must the migrants go. They are 
not wanted by the whites and are treated with 
contempt by the native blacks of the northern 



Exodus during the World War 187 

cities, who consider their brethren from the South 
too criminal and too vicious to be tolerated. 
In the average progressive city there has hereto- 
fore been a certain increase in the number of 
houses through natural growth, but owing to the 
high cost of materials, high wages, increasing 
taxation and the inclination to invest money in 
enterprises growing out of the war, fewer houses 
are now being built, although Negroes are pour- 
ing into these centers as a steady stream. The 
usual Negro quarters in northern centers of this 
sort have been filled up and the overflow of the 
black population scattered throughout the city 
among white people. Old warehouses, store 
rooms, churches, railroad cars and tents have 
been used to meet these demands. 

A large per cent of these Negroes are located 
in rooming houses or tenements for several 
families. The majority of them cannot find in- 
dividual rooms. Many are crowded into the 
same room, therefore, and too many into the 
same bed. Sometimes as many as four and five 
sleep in one bed, and that may be placed in the 
basement, dining-room or kitchen where there 
is neither adequate light nor air. In some cases 
men who work during the night sleep by day in 
beds used by others during the night. Some of 
their houses have no water inside and have toilets 
on the outside without sewerage connections. 
The cooking is often done by coal or wood 
stoves or kerosene lamps. Yet the rent runs 



188 A Century of Negro Migration 

high although the houses are generally out of 
repair and in some cases have been condemned 
by the municipality. The unsanitary conditions 
in which many of the blacks are compelled to 
live are in violation of municipal ordinances. 

Furthermore, because of the indiscriminate 
employment by labor agents and the dearth of 
labor requiring the acceptance of almost all 
sorts of men, some disorderly and worthless Ne- 
groes have been brought into the North. On 
the whole, however, these migrants are not lazy, 
shiftless and desperate as some predicted that 
they would be. They generally attend church, 
save their money and send a part of their sav- 
ings regularly to their families. They do not 
belong to the class going North in quest of 
whiskey. Mr. Abraham Epstein, who has written 
a valuable pamphlet setting forth his researches 
in Pittsburgh, states that the migrants of that 
city do not generally imbibe and most of those 
who do, take beer only.^ ^ q^^ ^f f q^j. jjundred 
and seventy persons to whom he propounded 
this question, two hundred and ten or forty-four 
per cent of them were total abstainers. Sev- 
enty per cent of those having families do not 
drink at all. 

With this congestion, however, have come 
serious difficulties. Crowded conditions give 
rise to vice, crime and disease. The prevalence 
of vice has not been the rule but tendencies, 

12 Epstein, The Negro Migrant in Pittsburgh. 



Exodus during the World War 189 

whicla better conditions in tlie Soutli restrained 
from developing, have under these undesirable 
conditions been given an opportunity to grow. 
There is, therefore, a tendency toward the 
crowding of dives, assembling on the corners 
of streets and the commission of petty offences 
which crowd them into the police courts. One 
finds also sometimes a congestion in houses of 
dissipation and the carrying of concealed weap- 
ons. Law abiding on the whole, however, they 
have not experienced a wave of crime. The 
chief offences are those resulting from the 
saloons and denizens of vice, which are fur- 
nished by the community itself. 

Disease has been one of their worst enemies, 
but reports on their health have been exag- 
gerated. On account of this sudden change of 
the Negroes from one climate to another and the 
hardships of more unrelenting toil, many of 
them have been unable to resist pneumonia, 
bronchitis and tuberculosis. Churches, rescue 
missions and the National League on Urban 
Conditions Among Negroes have offered re- 
lief in some of these cases. The last-named or- 
ganization is serving in large cities as a sort of 
clearing house for such activities and as means 
of interpreting one race to the other. It has 
now eighteen branches in cities to which this mi- 
gration has been directed. Through a local 
worker these migrants are approached, prop- 
erly placed and supervised until they can adjust 



190 A Century of Negro Migration 

themselves to the community without apparent 
embarrassment to either race. The League has 
been able to handle the migrants arriving by ex- 
tending the work so as to know their movements 
beforehand. 

The occupations in which these people engage 
will throw further light on their situation. 
About ninety per cent of them do unskilled 
labor. Only ten per cent of them do semi-skilled 
or skilled labor. They serve as common la- 
borers, puddlers, mold-setters, painters, car- 
penters, bricklayers, cement workers and ma- 
chinists. What the Negroes need then is that 
sort of freedom which carries with it industrial 
opportunity and social justice. This they can- 
not attain until they be permitted to enter the 
higher pursuits of labor. Two reasons are 
given for failure to enter these: first, that Ne- 
gro labor is unstable and inefficient; and sec- 
ond, that white men will protest. Organized 
labor, however, has done nothing to help the 
blacks. Yet it is a fact that accustomed to the 
easy-going toil of the plantation, the blacks have 
not shown the same efficiency as that of the 
whites. Some employers report, however, that 
they are glad to have them because they are 
more individualistic and do not like to group. 
But it is not true that colored labor cannot be 
organized. The blacks have merely been neg- 
lected by organized labor. Wherever they 
have had the opportunity to do so, they have 



Exodus during the World War 191 

organized and stood for their rights like men. 
The trouble is that the trades unions are gen- 
erally antagonistic to Negroes although they 
are now accepting the blacks in self-defense. 
The policy of excluding Negroes from these 
bodies is made effective by an evasive pro- 
cedure, despite the fact that the constitutions of 
many of them specifically provide that there 
shall be no discrimination on account of race or 
color. 

Because of this tendency some of the repre- 
sentatives of trades unions have asked why Ne- 
groes do not organize unions of their own. This 
the Negroes have generally failed to do, think- 
ing that they would not be recognized by the 
American Federation of Labor, and knowing 
too that what their union would have to contend 
with in the economic world would be diametri- 
cally opposed to the wishes of the men from 
whom they would have to seek recognition. Or- 
ganized labor, moreover, is opposed to the 
powerful capitalists, the only real friends the 
Negroes have in the North to furnish them 
food and shelter while their lives are often be- 
ing sought by union members. Steps toward 
organizing Negi'O labor have been made in vari- 
ous Northern cities during 1917 and 1918.1^ 
The objective of this movement for the present, 
however, is largely that of employment. 

Eventually the Negro migrants will, no doubt, 

18 Epstein, The Negro Migrant in Pittsburgh. 



192 A Century of Negro Migration 

without much difficulty establish themselves 
among law-abiding and industrious people of 

fthe North where they will receive assistance. 

I Many persons now see in this shifting of the 
Negro population the dawn of a new day, not in 
making the Negro numerically dominant any- 
where to obtain political power, but to secure 
for him freedom of movement from section to 
section as a competitor in the industrial world. 
They also observe that while there may be an in- 
crease of race prejudice in the North the same 
will in that proportion decrease in the South, 
thus balancing the equation while giving the 
Negro his best chance in the economic world 
out of which he must emerge a real man with 
power to secure his rights as an American 
citizen. 



BIBLIOaRAPHY 

As the public has not as yet paid very much attention to 
Negro History, and has not seen a volume dealing primarily 
with the migration of the race in America, one could hardly 
expect that there has been compiled a bibliography in this 
special field. "With the exception of what appears in Still's 
and Siebert's works on the Underground Eailroad and the 
records of the meetings of the Quakers promoting this move- 
ment, there is little helpful material to be found in single 
volumes bearing on the antebellum period. Since the Civil 
War, however, more has been said and written concerning the 
movements of the Negro population. E. H. Botume's First 
Days Among the Contrabands and John Eaton's Grant, Lincoln 
and the Freedmen cover very well the period of rebellion. This 
is supplemented by J. C. Knowlton's Contrabands in the "Uni- 
versity Quarterly, Volume XXI, page 307, and by Edward L. 
Pierce's The Freedmen at Fort Royal in the Atlantic Monthly, 
Volume XII, page 291. The exodus of 1879 is treated by J. 
B. Runnion in the Atlantic Monthly, Volume XLIV, page 222; 
by Frederick Douglass and Eichard T. Greener in the American 
Journal of Social Science, Volume XI, page 1; by F. E, Guern- 
sey in the International Eeview, Volume VII, page 373; by E. 
L. Godkin in the Nation, Volume XXVIII, pages 242 and 386 ; 
and by J. C. Hartzell in the Methodist Quarterly, Volume 
XXXIX, page 722. The second volume of George W. Wil- 
liams's History of the Negro Bace also contains a short chapter 
on the exodus of 1879. In Volume XVIII, page 370, of Public 
Opinion there is a discussion of Negro Emigration and Depor- 
tation as advocated by Bishop H. M. Turner and Senator Mor- 
gan of Alabama during the nineties. Professor William O, ,ij 
Scroggs of Louisiana University has in the Journal of Political jj 
Economy, Volume XXV, page 1034, an article entitled Inter-I 
state Migration of Negro Population. Mr. Epstein has pub- 
lished a helpful pamphlet, The Negro Migrant in Pittsburgh. 

193 



194 A Century of Negro Migration 

Most of the material for this work, however, was collected from 
the various sources mentioned below. 

BOOKS OF TRAVEL 

Bkissot de Warville, J, p. New Travels in the United States 
of America: includi7ig the Commerce of America with 
Europe, particularly with Great Britain and France. Two 
volumes. (London, 1794.) Gives general impressions, few 
details. 

Buckingham, J. S. America, Historical, Statistical, and De- 
scriptive. Two volumes. (New York, 1841.) 

Eastern and Western States of America. Three volumes. 

(London and Paris, 1842.) Contains useful information. 

Olmsted, Frederick Law. A Journey in the Seal)oard Slave 
States, with Bemarks on their Economy. (New York, 
1859.) 

A Journey in the BacTc Country. (London, 1860.) 

Journeys and Explorations in the Cotton Kingdom. (Lon- 
don, 1861.) Olmsted was a New York farmer. He re- 
corded a few important facts about the Negroes imme- 
diately before the Civil "War. 

WooLMAN, John. Journal of John Woolman, with an Intro- 
duction iy John G. Whittier. (Boston, 1873.) Woolman 
traveled so extensively in the colonies that he probably 
knew more about the Negroes than any other Quaker of 
his time. 

LETTEBS 

BoYCE, Stanburt. Letters on the Emigration of the Negroes 
to Trinidad. 

Jefferson, Thomas. Letters of Thomas Jefferson to Athe 
Gregoire, M. A. Julien, and Benjamin Banneker. In Jef- 
ferson's Works, Memorial Edition, xii and xv. He com- 
ments on Negroes' talents. 

Madison, James. Letters to Frances Wright. In Madison's 
Works, vol. iii, p. 396. The emancipation of Negroes is 
discussed. 

May, Samuel Joseph. The Eight of the Colored People to 
Education. (Brooklyn, 1883.) A collection of public let- 
ters addressed to Andrew T. Judson, remonstrating on the 
unjust procedure relative to Miss Prudence CrandaU. 



Bihliograpliy 195 

McDoNOGH, John. "A Letter of John McDonogh on African 
Colonization addressed to the Editor of the New Orleans 
Commercial Bulletin." McDonogh was interested in the 
betterment of the colored people and did much to promote 
their mental development. 

BIOGEAPHIES 

BiRNEY, William. James G. Birney and His Times. (New 
York, 1890.) A sketch of an advocate of Negro uplift, 

BowEN, Clarence W. Arthur and Lewis Tappan. A paper 
read at the fiftieth anniversary of the New York Anti- 
Slavery Society, at the Broadway Tabernacle, New York 
City, October 2, 1883. An honorable mention of two 
friends of the Negro, 

Drew, Benjamin. A North-side View of Slavery. The Befu- 
gee: or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada. Be- 
lated by themselves, with an Account of the History and 
Condition of the Colored Population of Upper Canada. 
(New York and Boston, 1856.) 

Frothingham, O. B. Gerritt Smith: A Biography. (New 
York, 1878.) 

Garrison, Francis and Wendell P. William Lloyd Garrison, 
1806-1879. The Story of his Life told by his Children. 
Four volumes. (Boston and New York, 1894.) Includes 
a brief account of what he did for the colored people. 

Hammond, C. A. Gerritt Smith, The Story of a Noble Man's 
Life. (Geneva, 1900.) 

Johnson, Oliver. William Lloyd Garrison and Ms Times. 
(Boston, 1880. New edition, revised and enlarged, Bos- 
ton, 1881.) 

MoTT, A. Biographical Sketches and Interesting Anecdotes 
of Persons of Color; with a Selection of Pieces of Poetry. 
(New York, 1826.) Some of these sketches show how 
ambitious Negroes succeeded in spite of opposition. 

Simmons, W, J, Men of Mark; Eminent, Progressive, and 
Bising, with an Introductory Sketch of the Author by 
Beverend Henry M. Turner. (Cleveland, Ohio, 1891,) Ac- 
counts for the adverse circumstances under which many 
antebellum Negroes made progress. 
14 



I 



196 A Century of Neqro Migration 

AUTOBIOGEAPHIEiS 

Coffin, Levi. Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, reputed President 
of the Underground Bailroad. Second edition. (Cin- 
cinnati, 1880.) Contains many facts concerning Negroes. 

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick 
Douglass, as an American Slave. "Written by himself. 
(Boston, 1845.) Gives several cases of secret Negro 
movements for their own good. 

The Life and Times of FredericTc Douglass from 1817 to 

1882. (London, 1882.) Written by himself. With an 
Introduction by the Right Honorable John Bright, M.P. 
Edited by John Loeb, F.R.G.S., of the Christian Age. 
Editor of Uncle Tom's Story of his Life. 

HISTORIES 

Bancroft, George. History of the United States. Ten 
volumes. (Boston, 1857-1864.) 

Brackett, Jeffrey R. The Negro in Maryland. Johns Hop- 
kins University Studies. (Baltimore, 1889.) 

COLUNS, Lewis. Historical Sketches of Kentucky. (Mays- 
ville, Ky., and Cincinnati, Ohio, 1847.) 

Dunn, J. P. Indiana; A redemption from Slavery. (In the 
American Commonwealths, vols. XII, Boston and New 
York, 1888.) 

Evans, W. E. A History of Scioto County together with a 
Pioneer Record of Southern Ohio. (Portsmouth, 1903.) 

Farmer, Silas. The History of Detroit and Michigan or the 
Metropolis Illustrated. A chronological encyclopedia of 
the past and the present including a full record of terri- 
torial days in Michigan and the annals of Wayne County. 
Two volumes. (Detroit, 1899.) 

Harris, N. D. The History of Negro Servitude in Illinois and 
of the Slavery Agitation in that State, 1719-1864. (Chi- 
cago, 1904.) 

Hart, A. B. The American Nation ; A History, etc. Twenty- 
seven volumes. (New York, 1904-1908.) The volumes 
which have a bearing on the subject treated in this mono- 
graph are W. A. Dunning 's Reconstruction, F. J. Turner's 
Evie of the New West, and A. B. Hart's Slavery and Aboli- 
tion. 



BibliograpJiy 197 

Hinsdale, B, A, The Old Northwest; with a view of the thir- 
teen colonies as constituted hy the royal charters. (New 
York, 1888.) 

Howe, Henry. Historical Collections of Ohio. Contains a 
collection of the most interesting facts, traditions, bio- 
graphical sketches, anecdotes, etc., relating to its general 
and local history with descriptions of its counties, prin- 
cipal towns and villages. (Cincinnati, 1847.) 

Jones, Chakles Colcock, Jr. History of Georgia. (Boston, 
1883.) 

MoMaster, John B. History of the United States. Six 
volumes. (New York, 1900.) 

Ehodes, J. F. History of the United States from the Com- 
promise of 1850 to the Final ^Restoration of Home Bule in 
the South. (New York and London, Maemillan & Com- 
pany, 1892-1906.) 

Steiner, B. C. History of Slavery in Connecticut. (Johns 
Hopkins University Studies, 1893.) 

Stuve, Bernard, and Alexander Davidson. A Complete His- 
tory of Illinois from 1673 to 1783. (Springfield, 1874.) 

Tremain, Mary M. A, Slavery in the District of Columbia. 
(University of Nebraska Seminary Papers, April, 1892.) 

History of Brown County, Ohio. (Chicago, 1883.) 

ADDRESSES 

Garrison, William: Lloyd. An Address Delivered before the 
Free People of Color in Philadelphia, New YorJc and other 
Cities during the Month of June, 1831. (Boston, 1831.) 

Griffin, Edward Dorr. A Plea for Africa. (New York, 
1.817.) A Sermon preached October 26, 1817, in the First 
Presbyterian Church in the City of New York before the 
Synod of New York and New Jersey at the Request of the 
Board of Directors of the African School established by 
the Synod. The aim was to arouse interest in colonization. 

REPORTS AND STATISTICS 

Special Report of the Commissioner of Education on the Im- 
provement of Public Schools in the District of Columbia, 
containing M. B. Goodwin's "History of Schools for the 



198 A Century of Negro Migration 

Colored Population in tlie District of Columbia. ' ' (Wash- 
ington, 1871.) 
Beport of the Committee of Representatives of the New Yorh 
Yearly Meeting of Friends upon the condition and wants 
of the Colored Eefugees, 1862. 
U-'<^LABKE, J. F. Present Condition of the Free Colored People 
of the United States. (New York and Boston, the Ameri- 
can Antislavery Society, 1859.) Published also in the 
March number of the Christian Examiner. 
Condition of the Free People of Color in Ohio. With interest- 
ing anecdotes. (Boston, 1839.) 
Institute for Colored Youth. (Philadelphia, 1860-1865.) Con- 
tains a list of the officers and students, 
{/ Jones, Thomas Jesse. Negro Education: A study of the 
private and higher schools for colored people in the United 
States. Prepared in cooperation loith the Phelps-Stokes 
Fund. In two volumes. (Bureau of Education, Washing- 
ton, 1917.) 
Official Becords of the War of Rebellion. 
Beport of the Condition of the Colored People of Cincinnati, 

1835. (Cincinnati, 1835.) 
Beport of a Committee of the Pennsylvania Society of Aboli- 
tion on Present Condition of the Colored People, etc., 1838. 
(Philadelphia, 1838.) 
Statistical Inquiry into the Condition of the People of Color of 
the City and Districts of Philadelphia. (Philadelphia, 
1849.) 
Statistics of the Colored People of Philadelphia in 1859, com- 
piled by Benj. C. Bacon. (Philadelphia, 1859.) 
Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1898. Prepared by 
the Bureau of Statistics. (Washington, D. C, 1899.) 
I^^tatistical View of the Population of the United States, A 
1790-1830. (Published by the Department of State in 
1835.) 
Trades of the Colored People. (Philadelphia, 1838.) 
United States Censuses. 

A Brief Statement of the Bise and Progress of the Testimony 
of Friends against Slavery and the Slave Trade. Published 
by direction of the Yearly Meeting held in Philadelphia in 
the Fourth Month, 1843. Shows the action taken by 
various Friends to elevate the Negroes. 



Bibliography 



199 



A Collection of the Acts, Deliverances and Testimonies of the 
Supreme Judicatory of the Presbyterian Church, from its 
Origin in America to the Present Time. By Samuel J. 
Baird. (Philadelphia, 1856.) 

American Convention op Abolition Societies. Minutes of 
the Proceedings of a Convention of Delegates from, the 
Abolition Societies established in different Parts of the 
United States. From 1794-1828. 

The Annual Eeports of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery 
Societies, presented at New York, May 6, 1847, with the 
Addresses and Hesolutions. From 1847-1851. 

The Annual Eeports of the American Anti-Slavery Society. 
From 1834 to 1860. 

The Third Annual Report of the Managers of the New England 
Anti-Slavery Society presented June 2, 1835. (Boston, 
1835.) 

Annual Eeports of the Massachusetts {or New England) Anti- 
Slavery Society, 1831-end. 

Eeports of the National Anti-Slavery Convention, 1833-end. 

Eeports of the American Colonization Society, 1818-1832. 

Eeport of the New York Colonization Society, October 1, 1823. 
(New York, 1823.) 

The Seventh Annual Eeport of the Colonization Society of the 
City of New York. (New York, 1839.) 

Proceedings of the New York State Colonisation Society, 1831. 
(Albany, 1831.) 

The Eighteenth Annual Eeport of the Colonization Society of 
the State of New York. (New York, 1850.) 

Minutes and Proceedings of the First Annual Convention of 
the People of Color. Held by Adjournment in the City of 
Philadelphia, from the sixth to the eleventh of June, in- 
clusive, 1831. (Philadelphia, 1831.) 

Minutes and Proceedings of the Second Annual Convention for 
the Improvement of the Free People of Color in these 
United States. Held by Adjournments in the City of 
Philadelphia, from the 4th to the 13th of June, inclusive, 
1832. (Philadelphia, 1832.) 

Minutes and Proceedings of the Third Annual Convention for 
the Improvement of the Free People of Color in these 
United States. Held by Adjournments in the City of 



200 A Century of Negro Migration 

PJiiladelpUa, in 1833. (New York, 1833.) These pro- 
ceedings were published also in the New Yoric Commercial 
Advertiser, April 27, 1833. 

Minutes and Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Convention for 
the Improvement of the Free People of Color in the 
United States. Held hy Adjournments in the Ashury 
Church, New York, from the 2d to the 12th, of June, 1834. 
(New York, 1834.) 

Proceedings of the Convention of the Colored Freedmen of 
Ohio at Cincinnati, January 14, 1852. (Cincinnati, Ohio, 
1852.) 

MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS AND PAIVIPHLETS 

Adams, Alice Dana. The Neglected Period of Anti-Slavery 
in America. Eadcliffe College Monographs No. 14. (Bos- 
ton and London, 1908.) Contains some valuable facts 
about the Negroes during the first three decades of the 
nineteenth century. 

Agricola (pseudonym). An Impartial View of the Beal State 
of the Blaclc Population in the United States. (Philadel- 
phia, 1824.) 

Alexander, A. A History of Colonization on the Western 
Continent of Africa. (Philadelphia, 1846.) 

Ames, Mary. From a New England Woman's Diary in 1865. 
(Springfield, 1906.) 

An Address to the People of North Carolina on the Evils of 
Slavery, iy the Friends of Liberty and Equality, 1830. 
(Greensborough, 1830.) 

An Address to the Presbyterians of Kentucl:y proposing a Plan 
for the Instruction and Emancipation of their Slaves by 
a Committee of the Synod of Kentucly. (Newburyport, 
1836.) 

Baldwin, Ebenezer. Observations on the Physical and Moral 
Qualities of our Colored Population with Eemarlcs on the 
Subject of Emancipation and Colonisation. (New Haven, 
1834.) 

Bassett, J. iS. Slavery and Servitude in the Colony of North 
Carolina. (Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical 
and Political Science. Fourteenth Series, iv-v. Balti- 
more, 1896.) 



Bibliography 201 

Slavery in the State of North Carolina. (Jolins Hopkins 

University Studies in Historical and Political Science. 
Series XVII., Nos. 7-8. Baltimore, 1899.) 

Anti-Slavery Leaders of North Carolina. (Johns Hop- 
kins University Studies in Historical and Political Science. 
iSeries XVI., No. 6. Baltimore, 1898.) 

Benezet, Anthony. A Caution to Great Britain and Her 
Colonies in a Short Bepresentation of the calamitous State 
of the enslaved Negro in the British Dominions. (Phila- 
delphia, 1784.) 

The Case of our Fellow -Creatures, the oppressed Africans, 

respectfully recommended to the serious Consideration of 
the Legislature of Great Britan, hy the People called 
Qualcers. (London, 1783.) 

Observations on the enslaving, Importing and PurcJiasing 

of Negroes; with some Advice thereon, extracted from the 
Epistle of the Yearly-Meeting of the People called Qualcers, 
held at London in the Year 1748. (Germantown, 1760.) 

The Potent Enemies of America-, laid open: being some 

Account of the baneful Effects attending the Use of dis- 
tilled spirituous Liquors, and the Slavery of the Negroes. 
(Philadelphia.) 

A Short Account of that Part of Africa, inhabited by the 

Negroes. With respect to the Fertility of the Country; 
the good Disposition of many of the Natives, and the 
Manner by which the Slave Trade is carried on. (Phila- 
delphia, 1792.) 

Short Observations on Slavery, introductory to Some Ex- 
tracts from the Writings of the Abbe Baynal, on the Im- 
portant Subject. 

Some Historical Account of Guinea, its Situation, Pro- 
duce, and the General Disposition of its Inhabitants. With 
an Inquiry into the Rise and Progress of the Slave Trade, 
its Nature and Lamentable Effects. (London, 1788.) 

BiENEY, James G. The American Churches, the BulioarTcs of 
American Slavery, by an American. (Newburyport, 1842.) 

Bibney, William. James G. Birney and his Times. The 
Genesis of the Bepublican Party, ivith Some Account of 
the Abolition Movements in the South before 1828. (New 
York, 1890.) 



202 A Century of Negro Migration 

Brackett, Jeffery E. The Negro in Maryland. A Study of 
the Institution of Slavery. (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins 
University, 1889.) 

Brannagan, Thomas. A Preliminary Essay on the Oppres- 
sion of the Exiled Sons of Africa, Consisting of Animad- 
versions on the Im,policy and Barbarity of the Deleterious 
Commerce and Subsequent Slavery of the Human Species. 
(Philadelphia: Printed for the Author by John W. Seott, 
1804.) 

Brannagan, T. Serious 'Remonstrances Addressed to the Citi- 
zens of the Northern States and their Representatives, 
being an Appeal to their Natural Feelings and Common 
Sense; Consisting of Speculations and Animadversions, on 
the Recent Revival of the Slave Trade in the American 
Republic. (Philadelphia, 1805.) 

Campbell, J. V. Political History of Michigan. (Detroit, 
1876.) 

Code Noir ou Recueil d' edits, declarations et arrets concemant 
la Discipline et le commerce des esclaves Negres des isles 
franeaises de I'Amerique {in Recueils de reglemens, edits, 
declarations et arrets, concemant le commerce, I' adminis- 
tration de la justice et la police des colonies frangaises de 
I'Amerique, et les engages avec le Code Noir, et I'addition 
audit code. (Paris, 1745.) 

Coffin, Joshua. An Account of Some of the principal Slave 
Insurrections and others which have occurred or been 
attempted in the United States and elseivhere during the 
last two Centuries. With various Remarks. Collected from 
various Sources. (New York, I816O.) 

Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public 
Law. Edited by the faculty of political science. The 
useful volumes of this series for this field are: 

W. L. Fleming's Civil War and Reconstruction in Ala- 
bama, 1906. 

W. W. Davis's The Civil War and Reconstruction in 
Florida, 1913. 

Clara Mildred Thompson's Reconstruction in Georgia, 
Economic, Social, Political, 1915. 

J. G. de E. Hamilton's Reconstruction in North Caro- 
lina, 1914. 



Bibliography 203 

C. W. Ramsdell. Reconstruction in Texas, 1910. 

Connecticut, PuMic Acts passed hy the General Assembly of. 

Cromwell, J. W. The Negro in American History: Men and 
Women Eminent in the Evolution of the American of 
African Descent. (Washington, 1914.) 

Davidson, A., and Stowe, B. A Complete History of Illinois 
from 1673 to 1873. (Springfield, 1874.) It embraces the 
physical features of the country, its early explorations, 
aboriginal inhabitants, the French and British, occupation, 
the conquest of Virginia, territorial condition and subse- 
quent events. 

Delany, M. E. The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and 
""^ Destiny of the Colored People of the United States: polit- 
ically considered. (Philadelphia, 1852.) 

DuBois, W. E. B. The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. 
Together with a special report on domestic service by 
Isabel Eaton. (Philadelphia, 1899.) 

Atlanta University Publications, The Negro Common 

School. (Atlanta, 1901.) 

The Negro Church. (Atlanta, 1903.) 

and Dill, A. G. The College-Bred Negro American. 

(Atlanta, 1910.) 

• The Negro American Artisan. (Atlanta, 1912.) 

De Toqueville, Alexis Charles Henri Maurice Clerel de. 
Democracy in America. Translated by Henry Reeve. 
Four volumes. (London, 1835, 1840.) 

Eaton, John. Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen: reminis- 
cences of the Civil War with special reference to the worlc 
for the Contrabands, and the Freedmen of the Mississippi 
Valley. (New York, 1907.) 

Epstein. The Negro Migrant in Pittsburgh. (Pittsburgh, 
1917.) 

Exposition of the Object and Plan of the American Union for 
the Relief and Improvement of the Colored Race. (Bos- 
ton, 1835.) 

Fee, John G. Anti-Slavery Manual. (Maysville, 1848.) 

Fertig, James Walter. The Secession and Reconstruction of 
Tennessee. (Chicago, 1898.) 

Frost, W. G. "Appalachian America." (In vol. i of The 
Americana.) (New York, 1912.) 



204 A Century of Negro Migration 

Gaenett, H. H. The Past and Fresent Condition and the Des- 
tiny of the Colored Bace. (Troy, 1848.) 

Greelt, Horace. The American Conflict. A history of the 
great rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-64, 
its causes, incidents and results: intended to exhibit espe- 
cially its moral and political phases, with the drift of 
progress of American opinion respecting human slavery 
from 1776 to the close of the war for its union. (Chicago, 
1864.) 

Hammond, M. B. The Cotton Industry: an Essay in American 
Economic History. It deals with the cotton cultuie and 
the cotton Trade. (New York, 1897.) 

Hart, A. B. The Southern South. (New York, 1906.) 

Henson, Josiah, The Life of Josiah Benson. (Boston, 
y 1849.) 

•yHERSHAW, L. M. Peonage in the United States. This is one 
of the American Negro Academy Papers. (Washington, 
1912.) 

HiCKOK, Charles Thomas. The Negro in Ohio, 1802-1870. 
(Cleveland, 1896.) 

HoDGKiN, Thomas A. Inquiry into the Merits of the American 
Colonization Society and Beply to the Charges brought 
against it with an Account of the British African Coloniza- 
tion Society. (London, 1833.) 

Howe, Samuel G. The Befugees from Slavery in Canada 
West. Beport to the Freedmen's Inquiry Committee. 
(Boston, 1864.) 

HuTCHiNS, Thomas. An Historical Narrative and Topograph- 
ical Description of Louisiana and West Florida, compre- 
hending the river Mississippi with its principal Branches 
and Settlements and the Bivers Pearl and Pescagoula. 
(Philadelphia, 1784.) 

Illinois, Laws of, passed by the General Assembly of. 

Indiana, Laws passed by the State of. 

Jay, John. The Correspondence and Public Papers of John 
Jay. First Chief Justice of the United States and Presi- 
dent of the Continental Congress, Member of the Com- 
mission to negotiate the Treaty of Independence, Envoy 
to Great Britain, Governor of New YorTc, etc., 1783-1793. 
(New York and London, 1891.) Edited by Henry P. 



Bihliograpliy 205 



Johnson, Professor of History in the College of the City 
of New York. 

Jay, William. An Inquiry into the Character and Tendencies 
of the American Colonization and American Anti-Slavery 
Societies. Second edition. (New York, 1835.) 

Jefferson, Thomas. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Me- 
morial Edition. Autobiography, Notes on Virginia, Par- 
liamentary Mannual, Official Papers, Messages and Ad- 
dresses, and other writings Official and Private, etc. 
(Washington, 1903.) 

Johns HopMns University Studies in Historical and Political 
Science. H. B. Adams, Editor. (Baltimore, Johns Hop- 
kins Press.) Among the useful volumes of this series are: 
J. R. Ficklen's History of "Reconstruction in Louisiana, 
1910. 

H. J. Eckenrode's The Political History of Virginia 
during Eeconstruction, 1904. 

Langston, John M. From the Virginia Plantation to the 
National Capital; or. The First and Only Negro Repre- 
sentative in Congress from The Old Dominion. (Hart- 
ford, 1894.) 

Locke, M. S. Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction 
of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade, 
1619-1808. Kadcliffe College Monographs, No. ii. (Bos- 
ton, 1901.) A valuable work. 

Lynch, John E. The Facts of Reconstruction. (New York, 
1913.) 

Madison, James. Letters and Other Writings of James Madi- 
son Published by Order of Congress. Four volumes. 
(Philadelphia, 1865.) 

May, S. J. Some Recollections of our Anti-Slavery Conflict. 

Monroe, James. The Writings of James Monroe, including 
a Collection of his public and private Papers and Corre- 
spondence now for the first time printed. Edited by S. 
M. Hamilton. (Boston, 1900.) 

Moore, George H. Notes on the History of Slavery in Massa- 
chusetts. (New York, 1866.) 

Needles, Edward. Ten Years' Progress or a Comparison of 
the State and Condition of the Colored People in the City 
of and County of Philadelphia from 1837 to 1847. (Phil- 
adelphia, 1849.) 



206 A Century of Negro Migration 

New Jersey, Acts of the General Assembly of. 

Ohio, Laws of the General Assembly of. 

OviNGTON, M. W. Half-a-Man. (New York, 1911.) Treats 
of the Negro in the State of New York. A few pages are 
devoted to the progress of the colored people. 

Paerish, John. Bemarks on the Slavery of the Black People; 
Addressed to the Citizeris of the United States, particu- 
larly to those who are in legislative or executive Stations, 
particularly in the General or State Governments ; and also 
to such Individuals as hold them in Bondage. (Phila- 
delphia, 1806.) 

Pearson, E. W. Letters from Port Boyal, written at the Time 
of the Civil War. (Boston, 1916.) 

Pearson, C. C. The Eeadjuster Movement in Virginia. (New 
Haven, 1917.) 

Pennsylvania, Laws of the General Assembly of the State of. 

Pierce, E. L. The Freedmen of Port Boyal, South Carolina, 
Official Beports. (New York, 1863.) 

Pike, James S. The Prostrate State: South Carolina under 
Negro Government, (New York, 1874.) 

Pittman, Philip. The Present State of European Settlements 
on the Mississippi with a geographic description of that 
river. (London, 1770.) 

QuiLLEN, Frank U. The Color Line in Ohio. A History of 
Ea«e Prejudice in a typical northern State. (Ann Arbor, 
Mich., 1913.) 

EeynoIxDS, J. S. Beconstruction in South Carolina. (Colum- 
bia, 1905.) 

Bhode Island, Acts and Besolves of, 

KiCE, David. Slavery inconsistent with Justice and Good 
Policy: proved by a Speech delivered in the Convention 
held at Danville, Kentucky. (Philadelphia, 1792, and 
London, 1793.) 

Scherer, J. A. B. Cotton as a World Power. (New York, 
1916.) This is a study in the economic interpretation of 
History. The contents of this book are a revision of a 
series of lectures at Oxford and Cambridge universities in 
the Spring of 1914 with the caption on Economic Causes 
in the American CivU War. 

Siebert, Wilbur H. The Underground Bailroad from Slavery 



Bibliography 207 

to Freedom, by W. H. Siebertj Associate Professor of 
History in the Ohio State University, with an Introduction 
by A. B. Hart. (New York, 1898.) 

Stake, Frederick. What shall be done with the people of 
color in the United States? (Albany, 1862.) A discourse 
delivered in the First Presbyterian Church of Penn Yan, 
New York, November 2, 1862. 

Still, Wllliam. The Underground Railroad. (Philadelphia, 
1872.) This is a record of facts, authentic narratives, 
letters and the like, giving the hardships, hair-breadth 
escapes and death struggles of the slaves in their efforts 
for freedom as related by themselves and others or wit- 
nessed by the author. 

The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, Travels and Ex- 
plorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1619- 
1791. The Original French, Latin, and Italian Texts with 
English Translations and Notes illustrated by Portraits, 
Maps, and Facsimiles. Edited by Eeuben Gold Thwaites, 
Secretary of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. 
(Cleveland, 1896.) 

Thompson, George. Speech at the Meeting for the Extension 
of Negro Apprenticeship. (London, 1838.) 

The Free Church Alliance with Manstealers. Send bade 

the Money. Great Anti- Slavery Meeting in the City Rail, 
Glasgow, containing the Speeches delivered by Messrs. 
Wright, Douglass, and Buffum from America, and by 
George Thompson of London, with a Summary Account of 
a Series of Meetings held in Edinburgh by the above 
named Gentlemen. (Glasgow, 1846.) 

ToRREY, Jesse, Jr. A Portraiture of Domestic Slavery in the 
United States with Reflections on the Practicability of re- 
storing the Moral Rights of the Slave, without impairing 
the legal Privileges of the Possessor, and a Project of a 
Colonial Asylum for Free Persons of Color, including 
Memoirs of Facts on the Interior Traffic in Slaves and on 
Kidnapping, Illustrated with Engravings by Jesse Torrey, 
Jr., Physician, Author of a Series of Essays on Morals 
and the Diffusion of Knowledge. (Philadelphia, 1817.) 

American Internal Slave Trade; with Reflections on the 

project for forming a Colony of Blacks in Africa. (Lon- 
don, 1822.) 

15 



208 A Century of Negro Migration 

'''^Turner, E. E. The Negro in Pennsylvania. (Washington, 
1911.) 

Tyrannical Liheriymen: a Discourse upon Negro Slavery in the 

United States, composed at in New Hampshire: on 

the Late Federal Thanksgiving Day. (Hanover, N. H., 
1795.) 

Walkkr, David. Walker's Appeal in Four Articles, together 
with a Preamble to the Colored Citizens of the World, but 
in particular and very expressly to those of the United 
States of America, Written in Boston, State of Massa- 
chusetts, September 28, 1829. Second edition. (Boston, 
1830.) Walker was a Negro who hoped to arouse his race 
to self-assertion. 

Ward, Charles. Contrabands. (Salem, 1866.) This sug- 
gests an apprenticeship, under the auspices of the govern- 
ment, to build the Pacific Railroad. 

Washington, B. T. The Story of the Negro. Two volumes. 
(New York, 1909.) 

Washington, George. The Writings of George Washington, 
being his Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and other 
papers, official and private, selected and published from 
the original Manuscripts with the Life of the Author, 
Notes and Illustrations, by Jared Sparks. (Boston, 1835.) 

Weeks, Stephen B. Southern Quakers and Slavery. A Study 
in Institutional History. (Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins 
Press, 1896.) 

The Anti-Slavery Sentiment in the South; with Unpub- 
lished Letters from John Stuart Mill and Mrs. Stowe. 
(Southern History Association Publications, Volume ii, 
No. 2, Washington, D. C, April, 1898.) 

WiiiLiAMS, G. W. A History of the Negro Troops in the Wnr 
of the Rebellion, 1861-1865, preceded by a Peview of the 
military Services of Negroes in ancient and modern Times. 
(New York, 1888.) 

History of the Negro Pace in the United States from 

1619-1880. Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citi- 
zens. • together with a preliminary Consideration of the 
Unity of the Human Family, an historical Sketch of 
Africa and an Account of the Negro Governments of 
Sierra Leone and Liberia. (New York, 1883.) 



Bibliograpliy 209 

Woodson, C. G. The Education of the Negro Trior to 1861. 
(New York and London, 1915.) This is a history of the 
Education of the Colored People of the United States from 
the beginning of slavery to the Civil War. 

WooLMAN, John. The WorTcs of John Woolman. In two 
Parts, Fart I: A Journal of the Life, Gospel-Labors, and 
Christian Experiences of that faithful Minister of Christ, 
John Woolman, late of Mount Molly in the Province of 
New Jersey. (London, 1775.) 

Same, Part Second. Containing his last Epistle and 

other Writings. (London, 1775.) 

Soine Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes. 'Recom- 
mended to the Professors of Christianity of every Denomi- 
nation. (Philadelphia, 1754.) 

Considerations on Keeping Negroes; "Recommended to the 

Professors of Christianity of every Denomination. Part 
the Second. (Philadelphia, 1762.) 

Weight, E. R., Je. The Negro in Pennsylvania. (Philadel- 
phia, 1912.) 

MAGAZINES 

The African Methodist Episcopal Church Review. The follow- 
ing articles: 

The Negro as an Inventor. By R. R. Wright, vol. ii, 
p. 397. 

Negro Poets, vol. iv, p. 236. 

The Negro in Journalism, vols, vi, p. 309, and xx, p. 137. 
p. 137. 
The African Repository; Published by the American Coloniza- 
tion Society from 1826 to 1832. A very good source for 
Negro history both in this country and Liberia. Some of 
its most valuable articles are: 

Learn Trades or Starve, by Frederick Douglass, vol. xxix, 
p. 137. Taken from Frederick Douglass's Paper. 

Education of the Colored People, by a highly respectable 
gentleman of the South, vol. xxx, pp. 194, 195 and 196. 

Elevation of the Colored Race, a memorial circulated in 
North Carolina, vol. xxxi, pp. 117 and 118. 

A lawyer for Liberia, a sketch of Garrison Draper, vol. 
xrxiv, pp. 26 and 27. 



210 A Century of Xegro Migration 

The American Economic Bevieic. 

The American Journal of SociaJ Science. 

The American Journal of Poliiical Economy. 

The American Laic Beiieic. 

The American Journal of Sociology. 

The Atlantic Monthly. 

The Colonizationist and Journal of Freedom. The author has 
been able to find onlv the volume whicb contaiiLS the num- 
bers for the vear 1834. 

The Christian Examiner. 

The Cosmopolitan. 

The Crisis. A record of the darker races published bv the Na- 
tional Association for the Advancement of Colored People. 

Dublin Bevieic. 

The Forum. 

The Independent. 

The Journal of Xegro Elstory. 

The Maryland Journal of Colcnization. Published as the offi- 
cial organ of the Maryland Colonization Society. Among 
its important articles are: The Capacities of the Xegro 
Eace, voL iii. p. 367; and The Educational Facilities of 
Liberia, voL vii, p. 223. 

Hie Xation, 

The Xon-Slaveholder. Ttvo volumes of this publication are 
now found in the Library of Congress. 

The Outlool: 

Fuilic Opinion. 

The Southern irorJ:man. Volume xsxvii contains I>r. E. B. 
Wright's valuable dissertation on Xegro Eural Commu- 
nities in India. 

The Spectator. 

The Survey. 

The World's JVorl: 

XEWSPAPEES 

District of Columbia. 

The Daily National Intelligencer. 
Louisiana. 

The Xew Orleans Commercial Bulletin. 

The Xew Orleans Times-Ficayune. 



Bihliograpliy 211 

Maryland. 

The Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser. 

The Maryland Gazette. 

Bunlop's Maryland Gazette or The Baltimore Advertiser. 
Massachusetts. 

The Liberator. 
Mississippi. 

The VicTcsburg Daily Commercial. 
New York. 

The New York Daily Advertiser. 

The New YorJc Tribune. 

The New YorTc Times. 



INDEX 



Adams, Henry, leader of the 
exodus to Kansas, 135 

Akron, friends of fugitives in, 
30 

Alton Telegraph, comment of, 
113 

Anderson, promoter of settling 
of Negroes in Jamaica, 79 

Anti-slavery, leaders of the 
movement, became more 
^helpful to the refugees, 
34, 35 

Anti-slavery sentiment, of 
two kinds. 3 

American Federation of La- 
bor, attitude of, toward Ne- 
gro labor, 191 

Appalachian highland, settlers 
of, aided fugitives, 31-34; 
exodus of Negroes to, 146 

Arkansas, drain of laborers 
to, 120 

Ball, J. P., a contractor, 95 

Ball, Thomas, a contractor, 95 

Barclay, interest of, in the 
sending of Negroes to Ja- 
maica, 79 

Barrett, Owen A., discoverer 
of a remedy, 90 

Bates, owner of slaves at St. 
Genevieve, 7 

Beauvais, owner of slaves, 
Upper Louisiana, 7 

Benezet, Anthony, plan of, to 
colonize Negroes in West, 
9; interest of, in settling 
Negroes in the West, 61 

Berlin Cross Eoads, Negroes 
of, 24 

Bibb, Henry, interest of, in 
colonization, 79 



Birney, James G.j promoter 
of the migration of the Ne- 
groes, 35j press of, de- 
stroyed by mob in Cincin- 
nati, 57 

BlacTc Friday, riot of, in 
Portsmouth, 57 

Blackburn, Thornton, a fugi- 
tive claimed in Detroit, 59- 
60 

Boll weevil, a cause of migra- 
tion, 169 

Boston, friends of fugitives 
in, 31 

Boyce, Stanbury, went with 
his father to Trinidad in 
the fifties, 7& 

Boyd, Henry, a successful me- 
chanic in Cincinnati, 95 

Brannagan, Thomas, advocate 
of colonizing the Negroes 
in the West, 10 ; interest 
of, in settling Negroes in 
the West, 61 

Brissot de Warville, observa- 
tions of, on Negroes in the 
West, 12 

British Guiana, attractive to 
free Negroes, 68 

Brooklyn, Ilinois, a Negro 
community, 30 

Brown, John, in the Appa- 
lachian highland, 33-34 

Brown County, Ohio, Negroes 
in, 25 

Buffalo, friends of fugitives 
in, 30 

Butler, General, holds Ne- 
groes as contraband, 107 ; 
policy of, followed by Gen- 
eral Wood and General 
Banks, 102 



212 



Index 



213 



Cairo, Illinois^ an outlet for 
the refugees, 112 

Calvin Township, Cass Coun- 
ty, Michigan, a Negro com- 
munity, 28-29; note on 
progress of, 29 

Campbell, Sir George, com- 
ment on condition of Ne- 
groes in Kansas City, 143 

Canaan, New Hampshire, 
break-up of school of, ad- 
mitting Negroes, 49 

Canada, the migration of Ne- 
groes to, 35 ; settlements in, 
36 

Canadians, supply of slaves 
of, 13; prohibited the im- 
portation of slaves, 14 

Canterbury, people of, im- 
prison Prudence Crandall 
because she taught Ne- 
groes, 49 

Cardoza, F. L., return of 
from Edinburgh to South 
Carolina, 124 

Cassey, Joseph C, a lumber 
merchant, 87 

Cassey, Joseph, a broker in 
Philadelphia, 89 

Chester, T. Morris, went from 
Pittsburgh to settle in 
Louisiana, 124 

Cincinnati, friends of fvigi- 
tives in, 30 ; mobs, 56-58 ; 
successful Negroes of, 92- 
95 

Clark, Edward V., a jeweler, 
88 

Clay, Henry, a colonization- 
ist, 63 

Code for indentured servants 
in West, note, 14—16 

Coffin, Levi, comment on the 
condition of the refugees, 
114 

Coles, Edward, moved to Illi- 
nois to free his slaves, 29; 
correspondence with Jeffer- 
son on slavery, 68-80 

Colgate, Kichard, master of 



James Wenyam who escaped 
to the West, 11 

Collins, Henry M., interest of, 
in colonization, 79; a real 
estate man in Pittsburgh, 
90 

Corbin, J. C, return of, from 
Chillicothe to Arkansas, 125 

Colonization proposed as a 
remedy for migration, 4; 
in the West, 4, 10; organ- 
ization of society of, 63 ; 
failure to remove free Ne- 
groes, 64-65, 66; opposed 
by free people of color, 65- 
66; meetings of, in the in- 
terest of the West Indies, 
69-70; impeded by the ex- 
odus to the West Indies, 70 ; 
a remedy for migration, 61- 
80 

Colonization Society, organiza- 
tion of, 63 ; renewed ef- 
forts of, 148 

Colonizationists, opposition of, 
to the migration to the 
West Indies, 70-74 

Columbia, Pa^, friends of fu- 
gitives in, 30 

Compagnie de 1 'Occident in 
control of Louisiana, 6 

Condition of fugitives in con- 
traband camps, 103, 104, 
107-108, 109-110, 114, 115 

Congested districts in the 
North, 188-189 

Connecticut exterminated slav- 
ery, 2; law of, against 
teaching Negroes, 49-50 

Conventions of Negroes, 99^ 
100 

Cook, Forman B., a broker, 
97 

Crandall, A. W.^ interest in 
checking the exodus to Kan- 
sas, 135 

Crandall, Prudence, imprisoned 
because she taught ISTegroes, 
49 



214 



Index 



Credit system^, a cause of un- 
rest, 132, 133, 134 

Crozat, Antoine, as Governor 
of Louisiana, 6 

Cuflfe, Paul, an actual coloni- 
zationist, 63 



Davis, comment on f reedmen 's 

vagrancy, 119 
De Baptiste, Richard, father 

of, in Detroit, 28, 97 
Debasement of the blacks 

after Eeconstruction, 154 
Delany, Martin R., interest 

of, in colonization, 79-80 

De Tocqueville, observation 

of, on the condition of free 

Negroes in the North, 44 

Delaware, disfranchisement of 

Negroes in, 39 
Detroit, Negroes in, 27 
friends of fugitives in, 30 
a gateway to Canada, 35^ 
the Negro question in, 54^ 
55; mob of, rises against 
Negroes, 59-60; successful 
Negroes of, 96 
Dinwiddie, Governor, Fears 
of, as to servile insurrec- 
tion, 12 
Diseases of Negroes in the 

North, 189 
Distribution of intelligent 

blacks, 36-38 
Douglass, Frederick, the lead- 
ing Negro journalist, 98; 
advice of, on staying in the 
South to retain political 
power, 164; comment of, on 
exodus to Kansas, 138-139 
Downing, Thomas, owner of 

a restaurant, 87 
Drain of laborers to Missis- 
sippi and Louisiana, 120; 
to Arkansas and Texas, 120 

Eaton, John, work of, among 

the refugees, 110-111 
Economic opportunities for 



the Negro in the North, 
183-184; economic oppor- 
tunities for Negroes in the 
South, 184-185 

Educational facilities, the 
lack of, 155 

EUzabethtown, friends of fu- 
gitives in, 30 

Elliot, R. B., return of, from 
Boston to South Carolina, 
124 

Elmira, friends of fugitives 
in, 30 

Emancipation of the Negroes 
in the West Indies, the ef- 
fect of, 68-71 

Epstein, Abraham, an author- 
ity on the Negro migrant 
in Pittsburgh, 188 

Exodus, the, during the World 
War, 167-192; causes, 167- 
171, 172-176; efforts of the 
South to check it, 172; Ne- 
groes divided on it, 175; 
whites divided on it, 176; 
unfortunate for the South, 
177; probable results, 179- 
180; will increase political 
power of Negro, 180-181; 
exodus of the Negroes to 
Kansas, 134-136 

Fear of Negro domination to 
cease, 183 

Ficklen, comment on freed- 
men's vagrancy, 119 

Fiske, A. S.. work of, among 
the contrabands. 111 

Fleming, comment of, on 
freedmen 's vagrancy, 119 

Floods of the Mississippi, a 
cause of migration, 167- 
169 

Foote, Ex-Governor of Mis- 
sissippi, liberal measure of, 
presented to Vicksburg con- 
vention, 137 

Fort Chartres, slaves of, 6 

Forten, James, a wealthy Ne- 
gro, m 



Index 



215 



Freedman 's relief societies, 
aid of, 111-112 

Free Negroes, opposed to 
American Colonization So- 
ciety, 65-66; interested in 
African colonization, 67- 
68; National Council of, 79 

French, departure of, from 
West to keep slaves, 7; 
welcome of, to fugitive 
slaves of the English col- 
onies, 11; good treatment 
of, 12 

Friends of fugitives 30 

l^igitive Slave Law, a de- 
stroyer of Negro settle- 
ments, 82 

Ihigitives coming to Pennsyl- 
vania, 41 

Gallipolis, friends of fugi- 
tives in, 30 

Georgia, laws of, against Ne- 
gro mechanics, 84 ; slavery 
considered profitable in, 2 

Germans antagonistic to Ne- 
groes, 41; favorable to fu- 
gitives in mountains, 31; 
opposed Negro settlement 
in Mercer County, Ohio, 26- 
27 ; their hatred of Negroes, 
82 

Gibbs, Judge M. W., went 
from Philadelphia to Ar- 
kansas, 124 

Gilmore's High School, work 
of, in Cincinnati, 94 

Gist, Samuel, settled his Ne- 
groes in Ohio, 25 

Goodrich, William, owner of 
railroad stock, 90 

Gordon, Robert, a successful 
coal dealer in Cincinnati, 
95-96 

Grant, General U. S., pro- 
tected refugees in his camp, 
103 ; retained them at Fort 
Donelson, 103 ; his use of 
the refugees, 109 

Greener, E. T., comment of, 



on the exodus to Kansas, 
139-141; went from Phila- 
delphia to South Carolina, 
124 

Gregg, Theodore H., sent his 
manumitted slaves to Ohio, 
27 

Gulf States, proposed Negro 
commonwealths of, 147 

Guild of Caterers, in Phila- 
delphia, 89 

Halleck, General, excluded 
slaves from his lines, 102 

Harlan, Robert, a horseman, 
95 

Harper, John, sent his slaves 
to Mercer County, Ohio, 26 

Harrisburg, Negroes in, 24; 
reaction against Negroes in, 
44 

Harrison, President William 
H., accommodated at the 
cafe of John Julius, a Ne- 
gro, 90 

Hayden, a successful clothier, 
85 

Hayti, the exodus of Negroes 
to, 74-76, 79-80 

Henry, Patrick, on natural 
rights, 1 

Hill of Chillicothe, a tanner 
and currier, 92 

Holly, James T., interest of, 
in colonization, 79 

Hood, James W., went from 
Connecticut to North Caro- 
lina, 124 

Hunter, General, dealing wdth 
the refugees in South Caro- 
lina, 109 

Hlinois, the attitude of, to- 
ward the Negro, 54; race 
prejudice in, 50; slavery 
question in the organiza- 
tion of, 14; effort to make 
the constitution proslavery, 
15 



216 



Index 



Immi^ation of foreigners, 
cessation' of, a cause of the 
Negro migration, 172-173 

Indian Territory, exodus of 
Negroes to, 143 

Indiana, the attitude of, to- 
ward the Negro, 53; coun- 
ties of, receiving Negroes 
from slave states, 24; 
slavery question in the or- 
ganization of, 14; effort to 
make constitution of pro- 
slavery, 15; race prejudice 
in, 58; protest against the 
settlement of Negroes there, 
58-59 

Indians, attitude of, toward 
the Negroes, 144, 145, 146 

Infirmary Farms, for refugees, 
106 

Intimidation, a cause of mi- 
gration, 156 

Irish, antagonistic to Negroes, 
41 ; their hatred of Negroes, 
82 

Jamaica, Negroes of the 
United States settled in, 
78-79 

Jay's Treaty, 8 

Jefferson, Thomas, his plan 
for general education in- 
cluding the slaves, 9; plan 
to colonize Negroes in the 
West, 9-10; natural rights 
theory of, 1; an advocate 
of the colonization of the 
Negroes in the West Indies, 
68-69 

Jenkins, David, a paper 
hanger and glazier, 92 

Johnson General, permitted 
slave hunters to seek their 
slaves in his lines, 102 

Julius, John, proprietor of a 
cafe in which he entertained 
President William H. Har- 
rison, 90 

Kansas Freedmen 's Belief As- 



sociation, the work of, 141 
Kansas refugees, condition of, 

142; treatment of, 142-143 
Kaokia, slaves of, 6 
Kaskaskia, slaves of, 6 
Keith, George, interested in 

the Negroes, 20 
Kentucky, disfranchisement of 

Negroes in, 39; abolition 

society of, advocated the 

•colonization of the blacks 

in the West, 10 
Key, I'Vancis S., a coloniza- 

tionist, 63 
Kingsley, Z., a master, settled 

his son of color in Hayti, 

75-77 
Ku Klux Klan, the work of, 

128 

Labor agents promoting the 
migration of Negroes, 173- 
174 

Lambert, William, interest of, 
in the colonization of Ne- 
groes, 79 

Land tenure, a cause of un- 
rest, 131, 133, 134; after 
Reconstruction, 131-132 

Langston, John M., returned 
from Ohio to Virginia, 124 

Lawrence County, Ohio, Ne- 
groes immigrated into, 57 

Liberia, freedmen sent to, 22 

Lincoln, Abraham, urged with- 
holding slaves, 103 

Louis XrV, slave regulations 
of, 7 

Louisiana, drain of laborers 
to, 120; exodus from, 134; 
refugees in, 106 

Lower Camps, Brown County, 
Negroes of, 25 

Lower Louisiana, conditions 
of, 7; conditions of slaves 
in, 7 

Lundy, Benjamin, promoter 
of the migration of Ne- 
groes, 35 






Index 



217 



Lynching, a cause of migra- 
tion, 128-129, 156; number 
of Negroes lynched, 156 

McCook, General, permitted 
slave hunters to seek their 
Negroes in his lines, 102 

Maryland, disfranchisement of 
Negroes in, 39; passed laws 
against Negro mechanics, 
84; reaction in, 2 

Massachusetts exterminated 
slavery, 2 

Meade, Bishop William, a 
colonizationist, 63 

Mercer County, Ohio, success- 
ful Negroes of, 93 ; resolu- 
tions of citizens against Ne- 
groes, 56 

Miami County, Randolph 's 
Negroes sent to, 27 

Michigan, Negroes trans- 
planted to, 27; attitude of, 
toward the Negro, 54 

Migration, the, of the talented 
tenth, 147-166; handicaps 
of, 165, 166; of politicians 
to Washington, 160; of edu- 
cated Negroes, 161 ; of the 
intelligent laboring class, 
162; effect of Negroes' 
prospective political power, 
163; to northern cities, 85, 
163 

Miles, N. R., interest in stop- 
ping the exodus to Kansas, 
135 

Mississippi, drain of laborers 
to, 120; exodus from, 134; 
refugees in, 106; slaves 
along, 6 

Morgan, Senator, of Alabama, 
interested in sending the 
Negroes to Africa, 148 

Movement of the blacks to the 
western territory, 18; pro- 
moted by Quakers, 18 

Movements of Negroes during 
the Civil War, 101-124; of 
poor whites, 101 



Mulber, Stephen, a contractor, 

91 
Murder of Negroes in the 

South, 128-129 

Natural rights, the effect of 
the discussion of, on the 
condition of the Negro, 1-2 

Negro journalists, the number 
of, 98 

Negroes, condition of, after 
Reconstruction, 126-129 ; es- 
caped to the West, 11; 
those having wealth tend to 
remain in the South, 160; 
migration of, to Mexico, 
151 ; exodus of, to Liberia, 
157 ; no freedom of speech 
of, 165; not migratory, 121; 
leaders of Reconstruction, 
largely from the North, 123 ; 
mechanics in Cincinnati, 94- 
95; servants on Ohio river 
vessels, 94 

New Hampshire, exterminated 
slavery, 2 

New Jersey, abolished slavery, 
2 

New York, abolition of slavery 
in, 2 ; friends of fugitives 
in, 31; mobs of, attack Ne- 
groes, 48; Negro suffrage 
in, 40; restrictions of, on 
Negroes, 48-49 

North Carolina, Negro suf- 
frage in, 39-40; Quakers 
of, promoting the migration 
of the Negroes, 18-19, 21, 
22 ; reaction in, 2 

North, change in attitude of, 
toward the Negro, 100; di- 
vided in its sentiment as to 
method of helping the Ne- 
gro, 83 ; favorable senti- 
ment of, 3; trade of, with 
the South, 3; fugitives not 
generally welcomed, 3; its 
Negro problem, 186; hous- 
ing the Negro in, 186-187; 
criminal class of Negroes in, 



218 



Index 



188, 189; loss of interest 
of, in the ISTegrOj 157; not 
a place of refuge for Ne- 
groes, 16 

Northwest, few Negroes in, at 
first, 17; hesitation to go 
there because of the ordi- 
nance of 1787, 17 

Noyes Academy broken up be- 
cause it admitted Negroes, 
49 

Nugent, Colonel W. L., inter- 
est in stopping the exodus 
to Kansas, 135 

Occupations of Negroes in the 
North, 190-191 

Ohio, Negro question in con- 
stitutional convention of, 
51 ; in the legislature of 
1804, 51; black laws of, 
51-53; protest against Ne- 
groes, 57 

Oklahoma, Negroes in, 144; 
discouraged hj early settlers 
of, 144-145 

Ordinance of 1784 rejected, 4 

Ordinance of 1787 passed, 4 ; 
meaning of sixth article of, 
4, 5; reasons for the pas- 
sage of, 5; did not at first 
disturb slavery, 8; construc- 
tion of, 8-9, 13 

Otis, James, on natural rights, 
1 

Pacific Eailroad, proposal to 
build, with refugee labor, 
113 

Palmyra, race prejudice of, 
42 

Pelham, Robert A., father of, 
moved to Detroit, 27, 97 

Penn, William, advocate of 
emancipation, 20 

Pennsylvania, effort in, to 
force free Negroes to sup- 
port their dependents, 42; 
effort to prevent immigra- 
tion of Negroes, 42; in- 



crease in the population of 
free Negroes of, 42; peti- 
tions to rid the State of 
Negroes by colonization, 45 ; 
era of good feeling in, 40; 
exterminated slavery, 2 ; the 
migration of freedmen from 
North Carolina to, 21; Ne- 
gro suffrage in, 40 ; passed 
laws against Negro me- 
chanics, 84 ; successful Ne- 
groes of, 88-90 

Peonage, a cause of migra- 
tion, 154 

Philadelphia, Negroes rush to, 
24; race friction of, 44; 
woman of color stoned to 
death, 44; Negro church 
disturbed, 44 ; reaction 
against Negroes, 44; riots 
in, 45-48; successful Ne- 
groes of, 88-90; property 
owned by Negroes, 89 

Pierce, E. S., plan for hand- 
ling refugees in South Car- 
olina, 102 

Pinchback, P. B. S., return 
of, from Ohio to Louisiana 
to enter politics, 125 

Pittman, Philip, account of 
West, of, 7 

Pittsburgh, friends of fugi- 
tives in, 30 ; Negro of, mar- 
ried to French woman, 12; 
kind treatment of refugees, 
12; respectable mulatto 
woman married to a sur- 
geon of Nantes, 12; riot in, 
47 

Piatt, William, a lumber mer- 
chant, 8'7 

Political power, not to be the 
only aim of the migrants, 
181 ; the mistakes of such 
a policy, 181-183 

Politics, a cause of unrest, 
153 

Pollard, N. W., agent of the 
Government of Trinidad, 



Index 



219 



sought Negroes in the 

United States, 78 
Portsmouth, friends of fugi- 
tives of, 30 
Portsmouth, Ohio, mob of, 

drives Negroes out, 57; 

progressive Negroes of, 92 
Prairie du Rocher, slaves of, 6 
Press comments on sending 

Negroes to Africa, 148-150 
Puritans, not much interested 

in the Negro, 19 

Quakers, promoted the move- 
ment of the blacks to West- 
ern territory, 18-38; in the 
mountains assisted fugi- 
tives, 34 

Eace prejudice, the effects of, 
82-83 ; among laboring 
classes, 82-84 

Randolph, John, a coloniza- 
tionist, 63 ; sought to settle 
his slaves in Mercer County, 
Ohio. 26 

Reaction against the Negro, 
20 

Reconstruction, promoted to 
an extent bv Negro natives 
of North, 123 

Redpath. James, interest of, 
in colonization. 80 

Refugees assembled in camps, 
105-106; in West, 106; in 
Washington, 155: in South, 
106; exodus of, to the 
North, 112; fear that they 
would overrun the North, 
113; development of, 116; 
vagrancy at close of war, 
117-118 

Renault, Philip Francis, im- 
ported slaves, 6 

Resolutions of the Vicksburg 
Convention bearing on the 
exodus to Kansas, 136-137 

Rhode Island exterminated 
slavery, 2 



Richards, Benjamin, a wealthy 
Negro of Pittsburgh, 90 

Richard, Fannie M., a success- 
ful teacher in Detroit, 97- 
98 

Riley, William H., a well-to- 
do bootmaker, 90 

Ringold, Thomas, advertise- 
ment of, for a slave in the 
West, 11 

Rochester, friends of fugi- 
tives in, 30 

Saint John, Governor, aid of, 
to the Negroes in Kansas, 
141 

Sandy Lake, Negro settlement 
in, 24 

Saunders of Cabell County, 
Virginia, sent manumitted 
slaves to Cass County, Mich- 
igan, 28 

Saxton, General Rufus, plan 
for handling refugees in 
South Carolina, 102 

Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, 
favorable to fugitives, 31 

Scott, Henry, owner of a pick- 
ling business, 87 

Scroggs, Wm. O., referred to 
as authority on interstate 
migration, 121 

Segregation, a cause of migra- 
tion, 157 

Shelby County, Ohio, Negroes 
in, 24 

Sierra Leone, Negroes of, set- 
tled in Jamaica, 79 

Simmons, W. J., returned 
from Pennsylvania to Ken- 
tucky, 124 

Singleton, Moses, leader of the 
exodus from Kansas, 135 

Sixth Article of Ordinance of 
1787, 4-5 

Slave Code in Louisiana, 7 

Slavery in the Northwest, 5, 
6, 7; slavery in Indiana, 5; 
slavery of whites, 5 



220 



Index 



Slaves, mingled freely with 
their masters in early West, 
7 

Smith, Gerrit, effort to col- 
onize Negroes in New York, 
86-87 

Smith, Stephen, a lumber mer- 
chant, 89 

South Carolina, slavery con- 
sidered profitable there, 2 

South, change of attitude of, 
toward the Negro, 185; 
drastic laws against vag- 
rancy, 121-123 

Southern States divided on 
the Negro, 32-33 

Spears, Noah, sent his manu- 
mitted slaves to Greene 
County, Ohio, 27 

Starr, Frederick, comment of, 
on the refugees, 113 

Steubenville, successful Ne- 
groes of, 91 

Still, William, a coal mer- 
chant, 89-90' 

St. Philippe, slaves of, 6 

Success of Negro migrants, 
81-101 

Suffrage of the Negroes in the 
colonies, 39^0 

Tappan, Arthur, attacked by 
New York mob, 41 

Tappan, Lewis, attacked by 
New York mob, 48 

Terrorism, a cause of migra- 
tion, 177 

Texas, drain of laborers to, 
120; proposed colony of 
Negroes there, 66 

Thomas, General, opened farms 
for refugees, 106 

Thompson, A. V., a tailor, 95 

Thompson, C. M., comment on 
freedmen's vagrancy, 118 

Topp, W. H., a merchant 
tailor, 82 

Trades unions, attitude of, to- 
ward Negro labor, 190-192 



Trinidad, the exodus of Ne- 
groes to, 77-88; Negroes 
from Philadelphia settled 
there, 78 

Turner, Bishop H. M., inter- 
ested in sending Negroes to 
Africa, 157 

Upper and Lower Camps of 
Brown County, Ohio, Ne- 
groes of, 25 

Upper Louisiana, conditions 
of, 7; conditions of slaves 
in, 7 

Unrest of the Negroes in the 
South after Reconstruction, 
126-130; causes of, 127-129, 
130; credit system a cause, 
132; land system a cause, 
131 ; further unrest of in- 
telligent Negroes, 152, 153 

Utica, mob of, attacked anti- 
slavery leaders, 48 

Vagrancy of Negroes after 
emancipation, 117-119; dras- 
tic legislation against, 121- 
123 

Vermont, exterminated slav- 
ery, 2 

Vicksburg, Convention of, to 
stop the Exodus, 135 

Viner, M., mentioned slave 
settlements in West, 6 

Virginia, disfranchisement of 
Negroes in, 39; Quakers of, 
promoting the migration of 
the Negroes, 18-19; reac- 
tion in, 2; refugees in, 106 

Vorhees, Senator D. W., of- 
fered a resolution in Senate 
inquiring into the exodus 
to Kansas, 138 

Washington, Judge Bushrod, 
a colonizationist, 63 

Washington, D. C, refugees 
in, 105; the migration of 
Negro politicians to, 160 



Index 



221 



Wattles, Augustus, settled with 
Negroes in Mercer County, 
Ohio, 25-26 

Watts, steam engine and the 
industrial revolution, 2 

Wayne County, Indiana, freed- 
men settled in, 23 

Webb, William, interest of, 
in colonization, 79 

Wenyam, James, ran away to 
the West, 11 

West Indies, attractive to free 
Negroes, 68 

West Virginia, exodus of Ne- 
groes to, 146 

White, David, led a company 
of Negroes to the North- 
west, 22-23 

White, J. T., left Indiana to 
enter politics in Arkansas, 
124 



Whites of South refused to 
work, 127-128 

Whitfield, James M., interest 
of, in colonization, 79 

Whitney's cotton gin and the 
industrial revolution, 2 

Wickham, executor of Samuel 
Gist, settled Gist's Negroes 
in Ohio, 25 

Wilberforce University estab- 
lished at a slave settlement^, 
27 

Wilcox, Samuel T., a mer- 
chant of Cincinnati, 95 

Yankees, comment of, on Ne- 
gro labor, 115-116 

York, Negroes of, 24; trouble 
with the Negroes of, 44 



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